Angry Moms are Rising Up Against Common Core

Anne Gassel, co-editor of Missouri Education Watchdog was quoted in USA Today about her opposition to Common Core.  From Include parents in standards debate: Opposing view:

Across America, moms are rising up against the Common Core, national standards for English-language arts and mathematics adopted by 45 states. As Anne Gassel, of Ellisville, Mo., said, "Parents and their legislators were cut out of the loop. Even now we can't get straight answers."

Read more here.

Anne is correct.  We are still waiting in Missouri for answers from DESE and their statewide May 2 meetings.  Tick tock.  The clock on the site (to the right) keeps ticking away.  The answers to the questions were to be posted within a week of the meetings. 

As Alisa Ellis states in the USA Today article:

Now, parents are waking up. Alisa Ellis, of Heber City, Utah, typifies their resolve: "Administrators want parents like me to step back and be quiet, but we will not. These are my children, and my voice will be heard."

You will be reading one angry and loud mom's account on MEW tomorrow about her attempts to get answers from Missouri politicians, bureaucrats and school officials.  It's time to start demanding straight answers from these people who are using our children and our tax money with no accountability.

ALEC's Decision on Common Core Standards a Pig-Headed Decision?

ALEC's decision on the anti-Common Core standards issue

It's a decision that isn't really a decision.  

h/t Big Education Ape: American Principle's Project press release on the ALEC vote today on anti-common core standards legislation. 

Washington, DC – Today, the board of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), after considering anti-Common Core legislation introduced by the American Principles Project (APP), Goldwater Institute and the Washington Policy Center last summer, delayed a decision on whether to endorse the legislation until their next meeting.

 

“ALEC’s delay in endorsing the resolution is troubling and plays into the strategy of the multi-billion dollar private entities that are pushing the Common Core,” said APP’s Emmett McGroarty.  ”This issue has been before ALEC for almost a year.  The resolution was approved by the ALEC Education Task Force overwhelmingly last December, and ALEC has discussed it at three of its national meetings.  The well-financed private entities and the federal government are moving forward with their implementation of the Common Core, and Americans have been cut out of the process.”

 

Dr. Tony Bennett, the Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction, presented the pro-Common Core case to the board of ALEC.   Dr. Bennett is also on the Board of Directors of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), one of the two trade associations managing the Common Core Standards (along with the National Governors Association).  Additionally, he is the Chairman of Chiefs for Change, an initiative of Jeb Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education.  The Foundation for Excellence in Education and CCSSO have received $1,000,000 and $70,000,000, respectively, from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the primary force financing and pushing the Common Core.

 

Robert Scott, Texas Commissioner of Education, presented the case for the resolution to the board, which then deliberated behind closed doors.  State Rep. Dave Frizzell of Indiana, ALEC’s National Chairman, reported that the board found that there was much to like about the legislation but decided to send it back to the Education Task Force due to concerns about some of the language.  He stated that the board would forward the details of those concerns to the task force.

 

What is there to "like about the legislation"?  It's bought and paid for by special interests and controlled by special interests as well.  It's tainted and circumvents the legislative deliberations.  If ALEC likes legislation developed and controlled by special interests which is then foisted on the American taxpayer and taxpayers and states are mandated to live by those special interests' plans, that may tell us all we need to know about ALEC.  

 

Why should some "concerns about the language" kick it back to the Education Task Force?  If the process is rotten, it doesn't matter if the language is changed or not. 

 

It's lipstick on a pig.  Change the lipstick or the language, the educational reform model is still the same pig.   And that pig is getting fatter every day with Jeb Bush and Bill Gates money at the trough. 

pigheaded:

Adj.

1.

pigheaded - obstinate and stupid bullet-headed, bullheaded obstinate, stubborn, unregenerate - tenaciously unwilling or marked by tenacious unwillingness to yield

 

 

ALEC Board to Vote on Anti-Common Core Standards.

So what's your bet on the vote?

There's a big vote tomorrow regarding common core standards:

• It's not a vote by the taxpayers to determine if they want them in their states.  
• It's not a vote by local districts to determine the educational direction for their students.  
• It's not a vote to rescind the standards by the state boards.
• It's not a vote by state legislatures to refuse funding for the unfunded mandates created by the standards.
• It's not a vote by Congress to refuse funding for the unfunded mandates.

Those would be the reasonable and constitutional votes by the entities if the rule of law had been followed instead of circumventing the voters and Congress to implement the standards.

The vote tomorrow will be taken to affirm the anti-common core resolution ALEC'S Board adopted last year.  From EdWeek:

You may recall that both my colleague Catherine Gewertz and I have written about a resolution at ALEC opposing the Common Core State Standards. The common core, unlike other issues such as model legislation supporting charter schools and vouchers, has caused some dissent in the conservative policy shop. Without getting too deeply into the details, the group's Education Task Force approved the anti-Common Core resolution, but the group's board of directors did not. Now, ALEC is set to consider the resolution again at its meeting on Friday, May 11. 

That reconsideration is being watched very closely. Stephanie Banchero of The Wall Street Journal wrote on May 8 that the group's deliberations could deliver a big hit to common core. Then on May 10, with a headline that read "'Common Core' Education Fight to Test ALEC's Conservative Chops," two other conservative think tanks, the American Principles Project (based in Washington) and the Pioneer Institute (based in Boston), directly appealed to ALEC to approve the resolution opposing the standards, which 46 states and the District of Columbia have agreed to adopt.

 

Both think tanks have produced a "white paper" (jargon for a "report") and a resolution that a state could use as a model to oppose the common core. 

In a press release accompanying the report and resolution, Liv Finne, of the Washington Policy Center (yet another conservative think tank) stated directly that: "The ALEC board should approve the resolution. ... At stake is whether the government responds to the people or to other interests." Emmett McGroarty of the American Principles Project said the report details how the common core was created by "private interests and trade associations" and strongly promoted by the U.S. Department of Education. Finally, the Pioneer Institute's executive director, Jim Stergios, said three federal laws would be violated by the common core's tests.

Will the ALEC Board fulfill its mission for smaller government?

According to the organization's website, members share a common belief that "government closest to the people" is "fundamentally more effective, more just, and a better guarantor of freedom than the distant, bloated federal government in Washington, D.C."

Or will ALEC follow the lead of a pro-common core Democratic and Republican governor?

Not to be outdone, Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, a Democrat, announced May 10 that he was "available to defend" the common core on May 11, the day of ALEC's vote. Markell wrote a 2010 op-ed piece with Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, praising the standards initiative. He believes that the standards will positively impact America's place in the world. 

Does it  matter to these governors that these standards are privately crafted, privately owned and if you believe Jim Stergios, they violate three federal laws?  Does it matter to the governors and state boards who agreed to these standards they create more bloated federal control?  Does it matter to ALEC?  Does it matter to you?

Polar Monitors Used to Track Student Depression, Suicide, Cancer, Alcohol/Drug Use, Sexual Activity? Public Student Data Stored on polargofit.com website

Polar Monitors may not only measure and provided data to schools about physical activity and heart rates in PE classes, there may also be assessments relating to student suicide, depression, cancer and diabetes risk.  It can even track student sexual activity, drug and alcohol use.  The company states this these invasive assessments are only suggested for those students 18 years or older, but is this the type of information that should be gathered by educational institutions on students of any age?  

The circumvention of FERPA law will allow this information to be disseminated on your student to various federal agencies and private companies.  The article contains a nifty link so you can see how this information will be gathered and how with the click of a mouse, broadcast to the cloud(s).


You can also read how school districts are funding these expensive monitors while cutting teachers and support staff.  We'll be writing more about this in the future and provide links so you can determine if your school district is signing onto this program providing your student's data and personal information to entities, probably without your knowledge or active permission.

This is from "Is the Privacy of the American Student at Risk" at The Revered Review:

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School:  A place where children learn to read and write. A place where they learn mathematics, science and history. Moreover, a place, away from home, where children are supposed to be safe.

Yet now it’s a place, across the country, where children’s hearts are being monitored, their activities are being tracked, and it’s being determined if students are obese or overweight. In addition, health risk assessments are being made on students and the information can be stored or saved as a PDF file.

In this physical education class, students are training using spin bicycles. However, in many schools, students are using Polar monitors in physical education classes. (Photo Credit: MJMonty)

Some students across the country, including in many small towns—are now wearing heart rate monitors and activity monitors—sometimes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week—as part of their schools’ phys ed programs. The New York Post reported that three schools were using these monitors and some, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and parents, questioned the possible intrusion into students’ privacy.

(Link here to continue reading the rest of the article from Revered Review)

"Coming to America" on January 3. It's Already in Britain and It's not Comedic Relief from Eddie Murphy.

"Global, global, global" 

If "global" wasn't a six letter word mantra constantly thrown around in educational "reform" circles, it would be a four letter word banished in polite company.  So much of the education "reform" being foisted on teachers, taxpayers and students ostensibly has to do with the fact we educationally lag behind other countries and our kids need to be more competitive in a global economy.  In this "reform" scenario, the government has no choice but to take control of taxpayers, students, state legislatures and local school districts and "nudge" the general populace into a plan requiring:

• the grading of teachers and administrators based on student test scores
• filling teaching positions with inexperienced Teach For America candidates AND "giving" Bill Gates a Department of Education website (government funded) so his foundation can screen applicants
• privatizing public education with hedge funded charter schools and virtual schools
• nationalizing standards, assessments and curriculum
• turning over the writing of the standards and assessments to private companies which have no accountability to taxpayers
• eliminating the sovereignty of a state's right to set standards for its own citizens
• creating mandates for states to fulfill which will financially bankrupt states
• and most egregious of all, establishing a national database on students (over 400 data sets) with personal information that circumvents current FERPA  regulations

Attorneys Emmett McGroarty and Jane Robbins wrote about the data base last week and the plan for the government to gather data to supply the workforce.  Here is the link with McGroarty's appearance on FOX talking about this data retrieval and the circumvention of the current law and Congress via regulations. 


The Department of Education tells citizens not to worry, the information will be fine and this run around of existing law is no big issue.  Here is the direct quote from Justin Hamilton, DOEd Press Secretary:

"The data is being used to assess the effectiveness of educational programs, not to track individual students.  The NY Post article is an incorrect assessment of what these new regulations set out to do.  Parents can rest assured that their children's personal information is protected better now than it ever has been."


Mr. Hamilton, please spare us the platitudes of:

• the government is here to help students
• the government is using personal information such as eye color, voting status, religious affiliation, income and education status of families, gestational age at birth, blood type and other personal data to assess the effectiveness of educational programs
• the government can protect children's information when it is farmed out to various other federal agencies AND private vendors...when governmental sites are hacked into routinely....can you say "Wikileaks"?

Since when did the use of a public school system include the government requiring the mandated signing away of individual right to privacy of personal data?  Also, would Mr. Hamilton care to expound on exactly what these new regulations set out to do?


Could it be this data being gathered is to establish a managed global economy?  Remember, education "reform" is indeed global.  We only have to look to Britain and its educational database and why it exists.  From The British Department of Education and Workforce Data Standards FAQs:

What is data harmonisation?

In broad terms, this means putting in place common data standards and data sets to create a unified data language, and a shared approach to business practices. Very significant gains can be realised through data harmonisation, ranging from much reduced volumes of data inputting, to the transmission of data in real time.

Back to top

 Why align workforce data standards and definitions for the local government workforce?

This is an initiative which has arisen directly in response to local authorities' feedback over the past few years. The current fragmented approach of different data standards for different data collections (especially in areas with cross sector interest, e.g. children's services) is burdensome both in terms of time and money for local authorities, providers and national bodies and hampers the exchange and sharing of data. It also reduces the quality and usefulness of the data collected.

Back to top

 Why harmonise data standards and definitions now?

The proposed provision of common standards and definitions is a recognition of the new challenges and complexities faced by local authorities and other service providers as they respond to the requirements of the School Workforce Census (SWF), the National Minimum Data Set for Social Care (NMDS-SC), the Local Government Earnings Survey and other major national collections.

NOWHERE in this British document does it state this data is to "assess the effectiveness of educational programs".  It's strictly to provide information to other national agencies and the workforce.  How does this document align itself to the US desire for data and its reasons?  From an Illinois Data System Warehouse document that also lists the personal data ready to be gathered on your child:

The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), along with our Education Partners, is now actively moving forward with the design and development of the state-wide Illinois Longitudinal Data System (ILDS).  The system, when fully deployed, will provide data to help to track the outcomes of Illinois students as they progress from Pre-K through Postsecondary education, and as they enter the workforce.  Longitudinal data supports an in-depth, comprehensive view of students’ progress and will ultimately help guide policymakers on where to invest time and energy to most effectively improve student achievement in our State. (emphasis added)

The ILDS is defined by Public Act 96-0107 and enabled through federal funding, and instructs the State Board of Education to link student test scores, length of enrollment and graduation records over time.  The system also will connect students to career planning and resources, with the potential to facilitate the application process for financial aid and records for transfer students.
ILDS will serve a large stakeholder group, including:

• Illinois State Board of Education
• Local Education Authorities
• Regional offices of education and intermediate service centers
• Parents and other members of the general public
• State Legislatures
• News media
• Research organizations
• Postsecondary Institutions
• State workforce and higher education agencies
• Education Partners

Question: if the information is to assess educational programs, is the information to help the student (to become good citizens) or to help the state (to provide workers for its purpose)?   The ultimate goal is for this data to supply the workforce:

The term workforce is defined as consisting of the workers engaged in a specific activity, business or industry or the number of workers who are available to be assigned to any purpose as in a nation’s workforce.

The public workforce system is a network of federal, state, and local offices that function to support economic expansion and facilitate the development United States workforce. The system is designed to create partnership with employers, educators, and community leaders in order to foster economic development and high-growth opportunities in regional economies so that businesses find qualified workers to meet their present and future workforce needs. (Emphasis added)

From US government documents it's obvious human capital is being groomed to be assigned to any purpose in a nation's workforce. In the sentence detailing the "partnership" of this system, what stakeholder is missing?  The student, the human capital is not mentioned as having power in the system.  If the information was to be used for educational assessment information solely, the data would focus on test scores, not personal information.  The various agencies in the US obtaining this data (similar to the agencies in Britain)  will use it to foster economic development, not for the personal development of your human widget.  

Here's another government document from the National Education Data Model listing data sets the regulations will require and allow your school to gather:

Manage, secure, analyze, and report student data to stakeholders (teachers, students, parents, administrators) in ways that are useful and appropriate for the particular type of stakeholder.

 Again, how is personal data such as eye color, voting status, religious affiliation, etc useful and appropriate for these stakeholders to know?  What DOES this have to do with the government providing a free education to American citizens?  Why is this information necessary for educational "reform"?  Could Mr. Hamilton answer these questions and specifically inform the citizens why the laws are being circumvented to protect student and family data?


Better yet, could Congress answer why it is allowing laws protecting citizen rights to be displaced in favor of governmental regulations that serve the government's purpose?  Since when did citizens belong to a system and become widgets in the economy and a means to an end for the governmental/private workforce?


From The National Skills Coalition on the data systems linking with the Departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services:



"By linking their education with workforce data and tracking education and employment program participants over time, states can see how well students in education programs are securing career path jobs in fields of importance to local economies".


In other words, the education of the human capital is of importance to the economy and workforce.  How well students are performing to become who THEY decide to be is inconsequential.  The workforce is directing the human capital, not the other way around.  

The Department of Education Just Won The Data Jackpot

Emmett McGroarty, executive director of the Preserve Innocence Initiative of the American Principles Project and Jane Robbins, a senior fellow with the APP, wrote a great opinion piece that was featured in today's New York Post regarding the new access the Federal Dept of Education just granted itself to a wide range of data about your children.  We are including it here in its entirety for your convenience.

Would it bother you to know that the federal Centers for Disease Control had been shown your daughter’s health records to see how she responded to an STD/teen-pregnancy-prevention program? How about if the federal Department of Education and Department of Labor scrutinized your son’s academic performance to see if he should be “encouraged” to leave high school early to learn a trade? Would you think the government was intruding on your territory as a parent? 

The government will have the ability to look at
any data they want to regarding your child.

Under regulations the Obama Department of Education released this month, these scenarios could become reality. The department has taken a giant step toward creating a de facto national student database that will track students by their personal information from preschool through career. Although current federal law prohibits this, the department decided to ignore Congress and, in effect, rewrite the law. Student privacy and parental authority will suffer

How did it happen? Buried within the enormous 2009 stimulus bill were provisions encouraging states to develop data systems for collecting copious information on public-school kids. To qualify for stimulus money, states had to agree to build such systems according to federally dictated standards. So all 50 states either now maintain or are capable of maintaining extensive databases on public-school students. 

The administration wants this data to include much more than name, address and test scores. According to the National Data Collection Model, the government should collect information on health-care history, family income and family voting status. In its view, public schools offer a golden opportunity to mine reams of data from a captive audience. 

The department’s eagerness to get control of all this information is almost palpable. But current federal law prohibits a nationwide student database and strictly limits disclosure of a student’s personal information. So the department has determined that it can overcome the legal obstacles by simply bypassing Congress and essentially rewriting the federal privacy statute. 

Last April, the department proposed regulations that would allow it and other agencies to share a student’s personal information with practically any government agency or even private company, as long as the disclosure could be said to support an evaluation of an “education program,” broadly defined. That’s how the CDC might end up with your daughter’s health records or the Department of Labor with your son’s test scores. 

And you’d have no right to object — in fact, you’d probably never even know about the disclosure. 

Not surprisingly, these proposed regulations provoked a firestorm of criticism. But on Dec. 2, the Department of Education rejected almost all the criticisms and released the regulations. As of Jan. 3, 2012, interstate and intergovernmental access to your child’s personal information will be practically unlimited. The federal government will have a de facto nationwide database of supposedly confidential student information. 

The department says this won’t happen. If the states choose to link their data systems, it says, that’s their business, but “the federal government would not play a role” in operating the resulting mega-database. 

This denial is, to say the least, disingenuous. The department would have access to the data systems of each of the 50 states and would be allowed to share that data with anyone it chooses, as long as it uses the right language to justify the disclosure. 

And just as the department used the promise of federal money to coerce the states into developing these systems, it would almost certainly do the same to make them link their systems. The result would be a nationwide student database, whether or not it’s “operated” from an office in Washington. 

The loosening of student-privacy protection would greatly increase the risks of unauthorized disclosure of personal data. Even the authorized disclosure would be limited only by the imaginations of federal bureaucrats.
Unless Congress steps in and reclaims its authority, student privacy and parental control over education will be relics of the past

Read original: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/how_the_feds_are_tracking_your_kid_xC6wecT8ZidCAzfqegB6hL#ixzz1hrKISgfc.

What Makes a Republican a Republican when talking about Education?

This is one of the most coherent articles explaining why supporting centralized education (as many of our state legislators support) as proposed by the present (and past) administration is NOT a conservative viewpoint.

Emmett McGroarty raises the crucial questions in this debate: Both candidates believe that public education should be accountable. The real question is accountable to whom? Should it be bureaucrats in Washington? Or should it be parents acting through the local decision-making process?

In the past (Thing 1 Bush presidency) and current administration (Thing 2 Obama presidency), parents and tax payers have had no voice or decision making ability. The current plan set forth by Arne Duncan will just give us more of the same dreadful policies.

Thing 1 is the same plan as Thing 2, except that Thing 2 has even more mandates for states, teachers, administrators and students. Is there any difference between Republican and Democrat politicians or have they all become elitists?

McGroarty starts the dialogue explaining the differences between conservative and not so conservative Republicans. Maybe the same type of article should be written explaining the difference between moderate Democrats and progressives. There are elitists in both parties selling out the American children, taxpayers and public education.

*************************************************************************

The big-government Republican instinct

By Emmett McGroarty,Executive Director of the Preserve Innocence Initiative of American Principles in Action.James Bell, Preserve Innocence Policy Advisor. - 10/03/11 04:22 PM ET

Conservatives who have been closely following the Republican debates have been looking for the candidate who rejects the “Big-Government” instinct that tempts many-a-contender. The key for primary voters is finding which issues separate the conservatives from those who are not so conservative.

In the recent Republican debate, that issue was education.

Education is a big public policy issue that gets scant media coverage during the primary season. One reason for this is that many Republicans have surrendered on the Constitutional principle that education is a local matter, where it is closest to parents.

For example, the policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama – No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top (RTTT), respectively – are indistinguishable in the overall direction they take the country, towards increased federal control. To the media, that elitist-Republican surrender gives the illusion of a non-newsworthy consensus. But if you talk to Republican voters outside Washington, it’s clear that there’s a smoldering resentment about NCLB and RTTT.

In the debate, Rick Perry, who has a history of fighting the federal education takeover, accused Mitt Romney of “being in favor of the Obama Race to the Top … and that is not conservative.”

Mitt Romney blustered: “I’m not exactly sure what he’s saying. I don’t support any particular program he’s describing. I think that the President – I think the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is doing a good thing by saying, you know what, we should insist that teachers get evaluated and schools have the opportunity to see which teachers are succeeding and which ones are failing and that teachers that are not successful should be removed from the classroom.”

Both candidates believe that public education should be accountable. The real question is accountable to whom? Should it be bureaucrats in Washington? Or should it be parents acting through the local decision-making process?

George W. Bush and Barack Obama believe that education must be made accountable to centralized bureaucrats. President Bush’s NCLB pushed a web of unfunded bureaucracy onto the states by creating a federal underpinning for state standards and tests and instituting a system for direct federal intervention to save “failing schools.” And Barack Obama’s Stimulus Bill gave us RTTT, a heavy-handed $4.35 billion funding program for which states could compete if they first committed themselves to national standards and tests.

Now, despite lacking legal authority to issue conditional waivers, Secretary Duncan has warned states that he will only waive the onerous NCLB sanctions unless they demonstrate their adoption of national standards ,run out of Washington.

The conservative view on education accountability and decision-making is consistent with, and flows from, the Constitutional framework. Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Jon Huntsman oppose both NCLB and RTTT, and have thus demonstrated their commitment to this principle. Michelle Bachmann, Ron Paul, and Gary Johnson have gone even further – calling for the abolition of the Department of Education.

In his RTTT battle with the Obama administration, Rick Perry articulated the conservative position with clarity when he rejected national standards, tests, and curriculum: “We would be foolish and irresponsible to place our children’s future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington, virtually eliminating parents’ participation in their children’s education.”

It’s time for all candidates to reject big-government forays into education and adhere to the truly conservative position.

Emmett McGroarty is the Executive Director of the Preserve Innocence Initiative of American Principles in Action, a 501 c (4) advocacy group affiliated with American Principles Project, a 501 c (3) public policy organization. James Bell is the Preserve Innocence Policy Advisor.

*****************************************

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/campaign/185173-the-big-government-republican-instinct