Common Core = Educational Equity, NOT Educational Excellence.

...two words NOT allowed in Common Core standards. "Uncommon" & "Creative"

Jamie Gass from Pioneer Institute writes about current DOEd education reform and common core standards in an article entitled "Leaves of Memory Going Dark":

Gov. Patrick, Secretary Reville, and other state officials must realize the damage the national standards are doing to the high school English curriculum and require yearlong courses in American and British literature, as well as classical literature in Grade 9 or 10. If they do not, their lasting legacy to the Bay State’s schoolchildren will be one of trading that which is beautiful and enduring for the jargon-filled dead language of educationists.

Here are some of the buzz words and jargon-filled dead language of educationists sprinkled in Arne Duncan's, Michelle Rhee's and David Coleman's statements about education and education reform:

• Educational equity
• Common core
• School choice
• Global competitiveness
• STEM ready
• College ready

What the educationists don't tell you but what is becoming apparent is this is not about individual education and teaching to each child.   That which is beautiful and enduring is being replaced with data driven assessments and conformity.  What is obvious is when the DOEd pushes common core, the emphasis is on common.  Education is not geared to excellence and surpassing goals.  Education's emphasis is for all students to be the same according to Arne Duncan:

His record of achievement is already secure. After talking about national standards for decades, the U.S. has finally adopted them. This is an example of Duncan’s quiet skills. By deleting the word “national” and working through the governors, he bested conservatives who have long refused to accept standards from Washington. Using the lever of Race to the Top, 41 states have adopted “common core” standards in just two years. “For the first time, a child in Mississippi and a child in Massachusetts will be judged by the same yardstick,” he says.

States won't be judged by the same yardstick, students will judged by the same yardstick.  This means children with low, middle and high IQ scores will be judged on the same common standards and assessments.  How's that working out for gifted or highly motivated students?  Common core is determined to make these kids common and services are being curtailed for them according to Insidehighered.com:

The College Board, facing widespread criticism, on Tuesday announced that it was abandoning plans to test out an August administration of the SAT this year. Many high school students want a summer option for taking the SAT, but many college and high school officials were upset by the College Board's plan to try out the idea with a summer program of the National Society for the Gifted and Talented -- a program whose $4,500 price tag led many educators to call the pilot a "rich kids SAT."

Initially the College Board defended the idea of using that group to test an August SAT. But on Tuesday, the board issued a statement that said in part that "certain aspects" of the summer program whose participants would gain the August SAT opportunity "run counter to our mission of promoting equity and access, as well as to our beliefs about SAT performance." The statement added, however, that the organization was "still very much committed to exploring the concept of a summer administration," and would look for ways in the future to do so "in a manner that better aligns with our mission and the students we serve. Steps also are being taken internally to ensure that future initiatives receive the appropriate level of senior management review."

This statement of equity and access from the College Board, soon to be headed by David Coleman, one of the primary architects of Common Core, is not surprising and is a foundational belief (if not the foundational belief) of educational reform.  What can gifted students expect in North Carolina thanks to Common Core?  From educationviews.org:

Under new education reforms adopted by North Carolina, gifted elementary school students will no longer be able to take middle school courses formerly available to them.

In an effort to phase in a set of national education reforms knows as the Common Core — an educational initiative that seeks to improve American education through unified and rigorous teaching across state lines — North Carolina has voted to install a more difficult curriculum for the 2012-2013 academic year.

Officials say that middle school math courses currently taken by gifted elementary school students will be too difficult for them after the curriculum changes, the McClatchy-Tribune reports. As a result, middle school courses will no longer be available to advanced elementary school students.

These changes fuel an already heated national debate on education reform. They raise the question of whether compliance to national educational standards such as the Common Core can stifle individual schools, preventing them from being able to push — and conversely, alienating — their brightest pupils.

This is reminiscent of Nancy Pelosi's statement about Obamacare:


"We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it...away from the fog of the controversy"



Now that the governors, state boards of education, and the common core architects are telling you what's in Common Core and educational reform, if you have a student whose learning style/ability is not "common"... good luck.
 

The Sunday Education Weekly Reader 01.15.12

Welcome to the Sunday Education Weekly Reader for 01.15.12.  Today we feature:

• Rahm Emanuel's bullying tactics to push his agenda for schools (we thought bullying in schools and work environments had been banished)
• Sex education (a national curriculum) in the classroom coming soon to your school?
• George W. Bush on his thoughts about the 10 year anniversary of No Child Left Behind

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Nancy Pelosi should call astroturf out when it's evident from the left.  Here's a story about Rahm Emanuel and his method of operation he utilizes to ram charter schools through in Chicago.  

The most disturbing revelations of Chicago's Millionaire Mayor One Percent was the use of paid outside agitators to hold signs, march, and speak in favor of closing public schools and Board of Education officials forging documents to push out homeless students from one school. All of the revelations have come out since New Year's Day, although many of the details had previously been published in Substance, some as early as last summer, when Substance first exposed what is now widely known as Rahm's "Rent A Preacher" scheme.
 
 Things became even more serious on the evening of January 6, 2012. State Representative Esther Golar said she was at the meeting about the proposed closing of Walter Reed School in Englewood, which is set to receive Guggenheim students, and saw people arrive on a bus. She said she talked to them and discovered they were from a halfway house and were paid $25 to come to the meeting. 

It looks as if community organizing is still alive and well in Chicago.  That's one way to push charter schools through in Illinois.

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 Education Week reports:

A new set of standards outlines the minimum that students should learn about their sexuality from their earliest years in school until they leave high school.


The standards, developed over the last few years by dozens of health and education experts, say that by the end of 2nd grade, students should be able to use the proper name for body parts, including male and female anatomy. By the end of 5th grade, they should be able to define sexual abuse and harassment. By the end of high school, they should be able to describe common symptoms of and treatments for sexually transmitted diseases including HIV, according to the standards released today with the backing of four national health education groups.

Is this within the purview of your school and federal government to mandate such courses to teach to your child?  You might want to call your school board to determine if such a curriculum will be offered/mandated in your public school system.  Ask your superintendent if such a course will help your human capital to become STEM ready.

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And finally, the best for last.  George W. Bush talked to TIME magazine about the 10th anniversary of the bipartisan and largely failed policy of No Child Left Behind.  It's a short piece but quite telling.  This paragraph caught my eye:

So when NCLB is finally re-authorized, what changes would you like to see?
Progress toward excellence. [Former Secretary of Education] Margaret Spellings recognized that in order to be able to accurately judge, you need to measure progress toward the absolute. But what I’m worried about is the pressure to have too many goals or measure the wrong thing.

With all due respect to the former president, this is one of the worst policies ever in education and has been a sorry blueprint for students, teachers and administrators.  It's been a colossal failure for increasing academic achievement and billions of dollars are down the drain.  He should not only be worried about too many goals and/or measuring the wrong "thing", he should be penitent NCLB was ever passed and these goals and measurements have been put in the hands of the federal government, the NGA and the CCSSO.  

Taxpayers are forced to pay taxes for services in which they have no voice.  And he's actually PROUD of this?

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Education thought for the week:

Teachers open the door.  You enter by yourself.--Chinese proverb



 

Nancy Pelosi's New Childcare Goal is a Compelling Reason to Make Sure She is Never Speaker of the House Again. Ever.

Hotair had this posting about what Nancy Pelosi envisions for American children:

Pelosi told The Washington Post that at the top of her to-do list as the reinstated Speaker would be “doing for childcare what we did for healthcare reform.”

Yikes. If the government does for childcare what it did for healthcare reform, then that would mean government educational mandates for families and children with no real individual and/or local choice or directives in public education. That doesn't sound appealing (or Constitutional) to me, does it to you?

That's what is currently happening via Common Core standards on the K-12 level. Nationalized assessments, standards and curriculum take the pesky and constitutional duty of allowing individual states and districts from making decisions for their students. A centralized government is being foisted onto states and districts via mandates in the educational and health areas. To complete the educational circle, Pelosi wants to expand governmental intrusion (no, "assistance") in the pre-K realm now. She states:

“I could never get a babysitter — have five kids in six years and no one wants to come to your house. … And everywhere I go, women say the same thing” about how hard it is to find the kind of reliable care that would make their family lives calmer and work lives more productive. When it comes to “unleashing women” in a way that would boost the economy, she says, “this is a missing link.”

Pelosi wants to "unleash women" in a way that will boost the economy, not "nudge" them into becoming full-time mothers who nurture, teach and love the next generation. I suppose "human capital" is deemed wasted if a woman decides she wants to direct her own children's upbringing instead of turning them over to some governmental employee for pay. Pelosi makes it clear. Women are to be used in the workplace to help the country rather than stay at home to raise the children who are the family's (not the government's) primary responsibility.

How do you think farming out young children to daycare works out so the women can "boost the economy"?

Studies show that children who spend longer hours (30 hours/week) in daycare are more likely to exhibit problematic social behaviors including aggression, conflict, poorer work habits and risk-taking behaviors.

Read our previous post on "Democrats Abroad" and the platform they want the DNC to adopt on behalf of children. It seems as if Nancy Pelosi is totally on board with her vision of the government providing childcare so the women can help the economy instead of their families. What does the resolution call for and where the principles for the resolution originate?

WHEREAS education is a human right and public responsibility to provide all children and young people with the opportunity to realize their full potential (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26, UNESCO).

Health care reform is education reform is healthcare reform is education reform....it's all the same. It's centralization not based in the Constitution, but in UN declarations. There's been pushback and legal challenges by grassroots groups against healthcare "reform"...where is the outcry for the education "reform" that will only create more control and less individual freedom?

Home Schooling for Adults: Here's a Chance to Test your Political IQ.

This is a fun political quiz for adults from the Pew Research Center. If you follow the news closely, you should be able to do reasonably well. Here is a quiz question which should be a "gimmee" and if you miss it, I would advise you to catch up on your political knowledge before you venture on:

Generally, which political party was regarded as doing best in the midterm elections?

Democrats
Republicans

In retrospect, this might be a trick question. The Speaker of the House seems to have a different perspective on the midterm elections than most political pundits. Compare the map from 2010 and 2008. Looking at the change in two years, a reasonable person could say to the Speaker, "you can't hide your lying eyes".

Pew stated about this particular quiz; "Public knows basic facts about politics, economics, but struggles with specifics". I wonder if the same can be said about the current majority parties in the House and Senate.

Have fun!

Job Opening: Interventionist for Government Liars, Wasteful Spenders, and Hoarders

I'm going to call A&E cable television to suggest a segment for its "Intervention" series. If you are not aware of these program, it deals with stories of people who are addicts to various substances. The interventionist tells the truth to the person about his/her addiction, and most of them ultimately agree to be whisked away for intensive treatment.



I suggest we contact the producers and report the Legislative and Executive branches of government for passing a $26 Billion Educational bill. Congress and the President should be reported for addictive spending and lying. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and President Obama tell us again and again...it's a crisis, it's an emergency...if we don't do anything, it would be terrible, awful, Armageddon. OK, maybe not Armageddon, but that's the gist of the shtick we've heard for the last 18 months as it relates to health care, energy, banking, GM, etc.



Imagine watching the "government intervention" segment: the first half hour of the show will concern the shenanigans and lies from the Federal Government. The second half hour will focus on state education departments for wasteful spending and hoarding the money so it can be used in next year's budget.



What's going to happen to the money given to the states to rehire teachers? It's probably not going to rehire teachers. Many of these states already have budgeted their expenses for the coming year, so this funding is a bit late to help them.



Could it be the state would like to hold on to this money to help it make it's educational budget next year? Wouldn't Jay Nixon look like Superman if he doesn't have to make more education cuts next year? This money isn't helping the Lindbergh School District which had to fire 35 teachers to make budget this year:



http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/article_e84ad70c-707d-5695-8ac3-2f33e2806684.html



Read it carefully. No one really knows where the money will be directed. The superintendents don't know, the commissioner doesn't know, the state budget director doesn't know. We think it will be parceled out via formula funding, meaning the Title 1 schools will receive the majority of the funds, and a school like Lindbergh is, well, out of luck. As Lindbergh's superintendent said, "It's not fun to be on the wrong end of irony". The district who had to cut the most teachers in the state will not get any money for which it is allegedly intended.



As the article stated, the NEA called the legislation "a victory for Missouri students, parents and public schools". I could not disagree more. I believe the main problem of this legislation has been described accurately by Michael Podgursky, an economist with the University of Missouri who studies education data. An interesting tidbit he shares: schools nationwide have added to payrolls in rates that have far exceeded enrollment growth". With all due respect to the NEA, our tax money should not be funding teachers who are not needed...this is not a victory, this is financial malfeasance.



If you operated your personal finances like these entities, you would be in jail...or your family would call in an interventionist to restore you to sanity. Anyone out there looking for a job? Perhaps some of the $190 Million being sent to Missouri could be used for an interventionist to change behavior of these out of control governmental agencies.

It's a "Mad World" in Education Land--UPDATED

Here is your musical offering for the day:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CnVOLFe838



This "Mad World" video is complete with printed words and I thought the following phrase was most appropriate for the post; "When People run in circles, It's a very, very...Mad World...Mad World...Mad World".



I believe the public education system and its students are currently trapped in "a mad world". The Federal Government is causing states to "run in circles" with its overreaching mandates. These mandates are overreaching as they are not financially sustainable or constitutional. Even some people in the liberal state of Massachusetts don't like common core standards:



http://boston.com/community/blogs/rock_the_schoolhouse/2010/07/lets_celebrate_we_have_nationa.html?camp=obnetwork



Jim Stergios' arguments mirror the arguments we have been making against these standards. The columnist quotes Tom Birmingham, former Massachusetts Senate president and state education reformer, about the signing on to the common core standards: "Low-reward, high-risk move".



Like Massachusetts, Missouri has higher standards than the current national standards. Like Massachusetts, we will have to take the focus off the kids to implement the new standards. Like Massachusetts, we've signed onto standards that have yet to be finalized. This reminds me of signing a blank contract for a business transaction. Would you sign such a piece of paper? Of course not. There are too many "fill in the blanks" that could be filled in at a later time to your detriment. This would be considered "madness", would it not? What the Massachusetts and Missouri state school boards have done is sign our children and teachers to learn/teach unknown standards. These Boards of Education have taken a page out of Nancy Pelosi's guide to government: "we have to sign it to find out what's in it".



Why did the Massachusetts and Missouri State Boards of Education sign on to common core standards? I propose it's because it's the precursor to be considered for Race to the Top funding. Remember, that's the money the state accepts so taxpayers will sink futher into debt...to the tune of $150 Million in Missouri.



This sounds like an unwise proposition to me. But it's all about the kids....right? Tell that to the parents as once again, the Department of Education gurus go chasing after yet more theories for educational reform. These theories will allow our children to become competitive in a "global society". It doesn't matter this will take years to put into place and billions of dollars. It doesn't matter this creates chaos for teachers and their students. It doesn't matter the Federal Government hasn't created a substantial increase in test scoring in 40 years, even as they have spent millions of our tax money money on this quest.



Race to the Top is in reality, Race to the Takeover. Based on the Federal Government's track record of directing social and financial programs, this is a frightening race. "Low-reward, high- risk" indeed. It's a mad world...



UPDATED: Read this post from Politico.



http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40246.html

The President is making a personal pitch for this program of control. Congress won't release some of the money for the "reforms" so now states are competing for even a smaller share of funding. Hmm. Instead of being on the hook for $150 Million here in Missouri, maybe we'll have to foot the entire bill of the changes we've been mandated to implement.


I swear, even if I had been writing fiction, I couldn't think up this foolishness and madness.