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Why Common Core is Wrong For America
1. Power shift: The key aspect of Common Core is that it is a power shift away from the local level. Under teaching traditional education, locally elected school boards had the decision making authority over curriculum. Teachers had authority over what to teach in her/his classroom. Once a district accepted Race to the Top federal funds, standards were mandated. The Chief State School Officers, CCSSO and the National Governors Association copyrighted the Common Core. Local control is dissolved as standards controlled from the government dictate what is taught and what is learned. Common Core creates a national curriculum and a national test.
2. Standards are geared toward workforce skills: Common Core College and Career Citizenship Standards were developed and benchmarked by ACT [American College Testing] in 2003 before the copyright was brought forward by CCSSO and National Governors Association. The Department of Labor went into contract with ACT to develop workforce standards in the 1990's in the SCANS documents. Secretaries Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills laid out the plans for ACT and the College Board to define the standards for workforce readiness. The standards include competencies that are basic [functional], thinking skills, and personal qualities. Personal qualities include psychological testing and interventions. CCSSO incorporated the personal qualities, dispositions into the Common Core. Attitudes and values will be tested, remediated, and is being developed in the research, development and dissemination (RD &D) in the Innovation Lab Network.
3. Opposite of traditional education: No competition-the bell curve is flattened. A standards based system of education is the opposite of traditional education. Traditional education is a floor, where Common Core is a ceiling. In traditional teaching, the teacher is in control of what is taught where the sky is the limit to teaching and learning. In Common Core, there are only a set of standards that the teacher is forced to teach which are monitored,evaluated, and controlled by the state, which was nationalized through a copyright, [CCSSO and NGA] being accepted nationwide. There is only a specific set of standards that will be taught and tested. Common Core creates a de-facto national curriculum with a national test currently being designed. [PARCC and Smarter Balanced and ACT Aspire]
4. Standardization: The Common Core copyright guarantees that the standards will be uniform in all 50 states. This standardization allows the business model to function, called total quality management. Every state had to also comply to a set of uniform data elements for data collection called a state longitudinal data system, on every student, every teacher, every principal, every superintendent, every school, every school district, every state. This cross referencing capability allows a decision making model to function where any person on the continuum can be pinpointed for evaluation, interventions, and compliance toward the standards.
5. Demands an individual education plan including attitudes, values, opinions, and dispositions that will be taught, tested, and remediated. The affective domain will be incorporated into Common Core Standards. The CCSSO and NAEP, National Assessment of Educational Progress, have incorporated dispositions into the Common Core. Response to Interventions, RTI, includes interventions into each child's personal career plans to meet behavioral and emotional standards. These non-cognitive standards demand an individual career plan or personal opportunity plan for each individual student. [small letter iep]. This plan addresses all interventions needed for the student to meet government psychological outcomes for college and career readiness. These individual, personalized plans are called personal opportunity plans or career pathways for college and career readiness.
6. Total Quality Management: Grades will be eliminated [ABCDF]. Students meet outcomes, and if they don't, they must go through intervention services. The Common Core is a business model that forces students to master outcomes and forces teachers into compliance of only teaching to the test. Students are evaluated through meeting standards not graded levels of achievement. No competition. A TQM system can link and identify any individual not complying to the standards. This is why each state had to have a state longitudinal system for tracking each individual in the school system: student, teacher, principal, superintendent, school, district, state. The key, no parent, school board, or state official has control of the standards. This is a top down system where decisions are made beyond the control of the elected at the local level.
7. Teacher pedagogy is primary focus: Teachers are held accountable and evaluated by VAM, value added measurement, or value added model, of how their students are tested not on how well they teach. Teachers are held captive to only teach to the national test. Therefore, teachers are forced to 'teach to the test' not what is best for their students. Traditional teachers are being dismissed and replaced by a troop of Teach for America newcomers, unexperienced and easily groomed for the new system. This is TQM. Teach to the test. Individual teachers will be monitored for compliance through accountability measures or be fired. Schools will also be monitored through accountability measure or be taken over by the state, academic bankruptcy or turnaround schools.
9. BF Skinner's Operant Conditioning or Mastery Learning is used: In order to force ALL children to perform exactly the same on meeting standards, operant conditioning, Mastery Learning, must be used [BF Skinner] to control the outcomes. Functional literacy, teaching math and reading through mastery learning, following directions or reading to assemble an item is assumed to be functional. Operant conditioning does not have transference of cognitive abilities because of the Pavlovian aspect of training. If you command a trained dog to roll over and has never been taught that command, they just sit there. That is called not having transference. Transferring knowledge is essential for comprehension and true higher order thinking, not controlled thinking. Behavioral conditioning is used in the Common Core pilot districts, called Innovation Lab Network. Do not be deceived by the term higher order thinking, critical thinking skills, or deeper thinking.
10. Equity in Education: No more grade levels, no competition: Common Core levels the bell curve. There will no longer be grade delineations like sophomore, junior, and senior. Students will work at their own pace on a computer. Everyone is given the same curriculum. Everyone must meet the same standards, only some will move faster or slower through the process. Common Core identified the individual child for the federal government so that mandated programs and interventions will be funded from the federal level…Title I funds to identify and assess (test). IDEA funds (special Ed) will be used for interventions. The state longitudinal data system monitors individuals in the data collection for identification, analyzing, decision making, interventions, in a continual cycle called feedback loop control.
This is equity in education where all students will be forced to be the same. ESEA Flexibility Waivers will identify children 'at risk' under Title I. What is the definition of 'at risk?' Students not meeting outcomes. Poverty levels, free and reduced lunch, are removed so ALL children become Title I under schoolwide. Title I funding follows the child for equity in funding. This is the set up for future federal choice in education where ANY child can receive a federal stipend under Title I, when that child can go to any private or religious school taking their federal choice stipend with them in their backpack with their name on it. Therefore, federal CHOICE mandates that all schools must teach Common Core, private and religious schools, too. The ReAuthorization of ESEA has not been passed yet, although Republicans have attached these choice amendments to allow funding to follow the child, but Obama's Flexibility Waivers have, by fiat, accomplished the same goal….accessing ALL CHILDREN through Title I. ALL SCHOOLS WILL BECOME GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS…if federal choice is passed in the ReAuthorization of ESEA.
Nationalizing Education in the United States.
Abolishing Representative Government Through Education: Common Core, Choice, and Charter Schools
By Anita B Hoge
Transforming America One City at a Time
Is this country at a tipping point? How do you transform our Republic? There are four main issues I will discuss in this article:
• Governance—removing locally elected school officials;
• Funding—ushering in federal choice and vouchers under the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) which will change our system of taxing and financing schools to one where the funding will follow the child (this is also a means to control private schools and expand charter schools);
• Charter schools—replacing your local neighborhood school with a zealous for-profit agenda so that there will no longer be parent or voter input, or elected school boards, specifically with an aim to kill public education.
• Common Core Standards—ushering in a system of individualized, psychotherapeutic learning; the standardization of teaching, testing, and technology in all 50 states; nationalizing education ; and changing traditional education based on academics to a workforce training model.
The combination of all four points above puts this scenario together. It demonstrates that this is the plan for the destruction of our country. The following stories tell the tale.
New Orleans. New York. Chicago. Detroit. Philadelphia. Washington DC, and countless other cities are casting a glimpse in how this nation is being transformed. If these large cities can be transformed, what chance do small cities and towns have to sidestep government takeover? There are both Democrat and Republican fingerprints all over this agenda. Based on a crisis such as a natural disaster, financial bankruptcy, corruption, or some other incident, there is an agenda to take control of a city's schools by transferring all authority to the mayor or the governor. In 2006, an action guide for mayors was published by the United States Conference for Mayors and funded by the Gates Foundation called, "Mayoral Leadership and Involvement in Education, An Action Guide for Success." It detailed a step-by-step process to gain control over a city, particularly its schools. Similarly, in 2008, the National Governor's Association wrote a report, "State Support for High Performing Charter School Expansion," which was a plan for state governors to expand charter schools. Is this the bigger plan?
What unique circumstances must be in place to force the closing of publicly-run schools by reorganizing them to become privatized charter schools? Dissolving all elected school board members and replacing them with appointed councils? Firing all the teachers and thereby breaking the back of the unions? [Leave aside for now the debate of benefit versus harm of the teachers unions, ed.] Replacing experienced teachers with fledgling 'Teach For America' or 'Education Pioneer' newbies who have had just a few weeks of training? Firing teachers through based on subjective evaluations and "high stakes" testing of students that measures and molds their personalities? Designing a tax system that moves the tax base away from the local community? Forcing local neighborhood schools to close? Dislocating students from their neighborhood surroundings? Co-locating charter schools within a public school? Destroying both your parental voice and your representative vote so that there is no longer any local school district accountability?
Many of us over the past few decades have been watching elected officials be thrown out of their rightful positions. We have watched as parents and educators at meetings and rallies begging for their schools not to close. Do American citizens truly understand the overall effects of these increasingly common local events to the entire country? Is there more to this story? Yes!
Common Core and Its Agenda
This report explains the reality that America is facing right now. The foundation of the [unconstitutional] individual mandate in Obamacare is the same authority creating an individual mandate in education with the implementation of Common Core Standards. Both represent an individual mandate that forces individuals to comply with regulations that erase individual rights, local control, and states' rights. This foundation has already been laid in several of the largest cities in America, and those people have felt the pangs of freedom being stripped away from them. The smaller cities are wriggling, dangling bait waiting to be snatched up into this frenzy of privatization and crony-dealt deals. This agenda will be full-speed ahead when the reauthorization of ESEA legislation goes to conference and is passed, and it may also be hastened during another crisis, such as when the economy dips again.
President Barack Obama and both the Democratic and Republican policymakers have embraced the agenda. HR 5 and SB 1094 (the ESEA federal "choice" legislation where the money follows a child) will crush our Republic and usher the final blow. It will strangle budget-strapped cities and feed the privatized charter school spillover that will occur. Investors, especially those who will profit from this coming crisis, have been loitering on the sidelines, keeping their eyes on Washington policies and politics. And, we should do the same.
The Agenda of Common Core, Choice and Charter Schools
HR 5 and SB 1094, the reauthorization of the ESEA will ultimately destroy both public and private education, especially through nationalizing education in the United States through so-called choice" and charter schools. Charter schools are not private schools; they are publicly financed and regulated "choice" and the money follows the child.
It is important to realize that the finger pointing at each "side" by both Republican and Democrat was planned and intentional. Both sides want to get this job done even though it will end up crashing our economic system and our system of government.
Let's set up the agenda: Common Core standards are already well established in almost all 50 states creating a de-facto national curriculum. Common Core is personalized education, requiring individualized remediation for both students and teachers. Common Core standardizes the national education system via testing data that will be collected, thereby assessing/measuring every child, teacher, digital curriculum, every principal, every school, every district, and every state through longitudinal monitoring instruments. Common Core changes our system of education to a business model. Basic functional literacy and workforce skills will replace the teaching of academic subject matter.
National testing through separate state consortiums (PARCC and Smarter Balanced and the testing contractor ACT) has formed the model research base and the foundation for a national test that measures Common Core (now College Career Citizenship Readiness Standards). A national diploma is being established: "Achieve, America's Diploma Project" and "ACT National Career Readiness Project."
Teachers will be evaluated, not on how well they teach academic content, but how well their students perform on assessment tests. With digital online curriculum and cyberschools replacing teacher functions in the daily school program, computers will reduce the need for teachers. This is all data-driven. Only the compliant will survive. Reuters reported on August 2, 2012, in an article titled "Private firms eyeing profits from U.S. public schools, that:
Education entrepreneur John Katzman urged investors to look for companies developing software that can replace teachers for segments of the school day, driving down labor costs. "How do we use technology so that we require fewer highly qualified teachers?" asked Katzman, who founded the Princeton Review test-prep company and now focuses on online learning. (Source)
So, how do we get rid of all those teachers? Union-busting mayors are taking over the schools, firing teachers, and launching charter schools where leniency in experience (such as "Teach for America" candidates) and certification varies.
Any state can easily opt out of the Memorandum of Understanding with the Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association plans to implement Common Core, but they are already ingrained into your school system when your state accepted "Race to the Top" grants and applied for ESEA flexibility waivers mandating standards, testing, curriculum, and teacher training. Common Core is not federal law, but your state has agreed to Common Core Standards, like it or not. It is cemented into your school system. Your state legislators must rescind Common Core and a standards-based system by law in order to return to an academic curriculum. This is a states' rights and local control issue since the federal government cannot legally direct or supervise curriculum. It can be done. But, the real pulling-the-rabbit-out-of-the-hat trick will be performed by the Obama/Duncan agenda. It will complete the feat of nationalizing education through the federal reauthorization of ESEA by implementing "choice." This agenda was designed with both Democrat and Republican approval in both houses of Congress. ESEA, (Title I) and Special Education (IDEA) will accomplish this goal.
In June of 2013, the Democrat-held Senate Education Committee released SB 1094, ESEA reauthorization, out of committee. On July 19, 2013, the Republican-held House of Representatives passed HR 5, with "choice" amendments in ESEA reauthorization bills that will change our system of government via a huge push toward charter schools. On July 24, 2013, Capital Roundtable, which provides information for the alternative asset industries, sponsored a private venue conference for middle market private equity investors in New York to learn where to invest in for-profit education companies; i.e. "choice." Coincidental? I don't think so. The private business sector is offering numerous opportunities to ride this wave. Follow the money trail.
Charter schools provide the greatest opportunity to collect a cut of your property taxes and destroy your local representative government by using public taxpayer funds. Charter schools do not have elected school boards nor any direct taxpayer accountability. They are designed to create an exodus of students from public schools into their federally-controlled "choice." Take a glimpse at the models in major cities that have been over-run with charter schools through extreme measures from mayors and governors. This phony "choice" agenda is just the beginning to control the public education system and change how our government functions locally.
How Does the Reauthorization of ESEA Feed Into Charter Schools?
The combination of HR 5 and SB 1094 will permit "choice" funds to follow an individual student, and those "choice" monies will be able to go into any private, public, religious, or charter school, thus diminishing the local tax base. Your neighborhood school will struggle and may eventually have to close. This is because officials must fund other private and charter school children who are no longer in their district, or even across state lines. As local school attendance dwindles, so does funding to pay for salaries, extra programming, facility upkeep, Obamacare, and benefit pension costs. If a city or district continues closing smaller neighborhood schools to keep up with their debt, more and more services are cut back, teachers are furloughed, severely hurting the function of the school and feeding the explosive exodus of students leaving the district. Neighborhood schools will crash financially. Cities are going bankrupt.
In both Chicago and New York charter schools have utilized a creative business model to restructure education by forcing public schools and charters to compete against each other for scarce resources. By introducing "choice" initiatives parents and students think they are private consumers of educational services, while in reality "choice" is stealing their voice in representative government. School closings by the mayors in these two cities have created a war in neighborhoods where parents and teachers are fighting the system to keep their schools open. Shuttering of these schools has created chaos, while charters schools continue to be expanded and given funding to continue to expand. Most parents did not realize there was a bigger plan yanking their neighborhood school out from under them. They have lost their elected representatives, their children are paying the price, and they have nowhere left to go to change the system.
The Lessons of the Chicago Charter Schools
The pre-planned Obama/Duncan education agenda modeled in Chicago is designed to have all public schools become charter schools, and this privatization agenda has been promoted as education reform. As CEO of Chicago Public Schools in 2001, Duncan shut down 60 failing schools in the poorest areas and replaced them with 100 new charter schools. Over the course of his tenure, Duncan employed a series of measures including the complete shuttering of schools, the replacement of failing neighborhood schools with a charter-run school, and/or the total replacement of a school's teaching staff. He used the test-driven, market-based policies [TQM, total quality management, a business model, ed.] built on the foundation of "Race to the Top." Student test scores would be tied to teacher evaluations creating an almost impossible high-stakes feat for teachers. All students with varying abilities must be "proficient," as it is defined by these assessments. Note: students are tbeing raumatized and have even become physically ill under the pressures of this constant testing bandwagon. Creative, bright children are refusing to go to school. Frustrated teachers and frustrated students do not make an environment for good learning.
Training and retraining of teachers has become a huge factor for the new Common Core reform evaluation agenda. "Teach to the test" is the survival tactic of educators. Teachers, public schools, and charters are all being evaluated by high stakes testing and the improvement brought about through "Race to the Top" federal grants. All this creates a lot of finger pointing. Pennsylvania's ESEA flexibility waiver grant used federal monies, plus a Gates Foundation grant of $800,000 [Bill Gates has been funding pilot projects of all this reform, ed.], to establish the Charlotte Danielson Framework For Teaching as a model to prepare teachers, principles, and superintendents for standards-based instruction. It states, "Our flexibility grant is all about teachers performing and being evaluated on how they teach the standards." Note: the standards are not under any local control; they are nationalized. Therefore, teaching the standards means teaching to the test. In fact, some charter schools do nothing but prime their students to take the test.
Controversy and charter schools are synonymous. There is an incessant juggling of test scores, picking and choosing their students, weeding out autistic kids, or those whose first language isn't English, moving the line of proficiency so more students will fare better on testing. Some charter schools simply remove children who test poorly, thus artificially raising test scores. Charters get their funding through attendance levels and even that has been controversial as there are attrition numbers when students leave. Some Charter schools have lotteries, some do not accept special ed students. Some charters select students by grade point average which is easier to manipulate to improve scores. Unfair comparisons have been made between charter schools with an attendance number of only 75 and a public school that has an attendance number of over 500.
One of the biggest controversies sprang from Washington D.C.'s past Chancellor, Michelle Rhee, who has been under attack for erasing school test scores. The documentary, Waiting For Superman, sings praises about charter schools and highlights Chancellor, Michelle Rhee. However, her tenure in D.C. has been marred with controversy.
The focus of this insidious agenda is to break the back of your neighborhood public school by using under-achievement as a crisis to close public schools, and then, conveniently, offering funding and setting up charter schools as the answer. "Choice" will finish the job of crushing the old system. It doesn't seem to matter to Obama, nor his Republican and Democratic cohorts, that this education plan is hurting minorities and the most desperate poor in this gentrification of communities and the remaking of public schools into charter schools. Families are being forced to move away or go to schools across the city. Objections from parents and teachers alike have fallen on deaf ears. Chicago, New York, New Orleans, and Philadelphia have felt the hard nudge of socialism, but not without protest, complaints, challenges and disapproval. However, parents and local communities seem to have no power to stop the changes once a mayor or governor takes control of their neighborhood schools. Make no mistake about it: Obama is using the "poor" to change our system of government.
The Per-Pupil Funding Agenda—"Following the Child"
Arne Duncan explained it in the Chicago District budget book that "funding is not tied to positions, which gives these schools much more flexibility in deciding how to spend their budget dollars." Chicago's business model attached dollars to students and let parents vote with their feet by choosing schools for their children. Chicago's funding is attached to kids with their name on it. Funding would follow the child and not fund programs, staff, or certain types of schools. Uniform-base funding or per-pupil funding (i.e., equalization and equity in funding) would replace how schools finance their budgets. There has been experimentation with a pilot weighted student formula-type program under Arne Duncan's seven-year tenure in Chicago where the money follows the child.
Will the United Sates 'rethink' how to finance public schools? It will be interesting to see the change toward the federal 'per pupil funding' (i.e., equalization and equity in funding) using "poverty" as a means for funding each individual student, and how that will work across the United States. Property taxes have been the norm, with local taxing authorities and local government in Plain Town America having control of the purse strings. What will happen to property values for homeowners? So, what will happen to those schools with Zip Codes in wealthier school districts, where parents want "better" schools, when the change for a uniform base funding scheme happens at the state level? Many states already have filed suit against the unconstitutionality of property taxes funding schools under "equality." It is called" leveling the playing field" for a socialist America. We can only guess at the impact of how this change might take place. Older Americans may bite the bait, believing that they will not have to pay for schools through property taxes. On the other hand, state taxes on purchases as well as transfer taxes of property may skyrocket. This part of the scheme remains to be unknown.
More on the Chicago Schools Catastrophe
In May of 2008, Duncan organized a conference, "Free to Choose, Free to Succeed: The New Market in Public Education" in Chicago with the Renaissance Schools Fund, the financial wing of the Mayor Daley's Renaissance 2010 plan operating under the auspices of the Commercial Club. Many critics denounced the scheme saying that this plan was not designed to improve the quality of education but rather a plan for privatization, union-busting and the dismantling of democratically-elected local school boards. It was also described as part of a neighborhood gentrification scheme involving the privatization of public housing projects through financial business developments. Poor, Black and Latino families were forced from their neighborhood schools and their homes when schools were closed and the property was bought up for redevelopment. The most impoverished would be dislocated. [Tony Rezko, friend of Obama and Mayor Blagojevich, made a fortune from these developments along with many corporate investors, ed.] The public school privatization agenda involved Renaissance schools being run by subcontracted for-profit companies. There was a shift in school governance away from teachers and elected community school boards to appointed administrators and appointed councils made up of business leaders.
Cities across America are gearing up for more charter schools. Why? Is it betrayal, is it a plan, or is it both?
In "Obama's Betrayal of Public Education? Arne Duncan and the Corporate Model of Schooling," December 17, 2008, Henry A. Giroux and Kenneth Saltman wrote:
It is difficult to understand how Barack Obama can reconcile his vision of change with Duncan's history of supporting a corporate vision for school reform and a penchant for extreme zero-tolerance polices – both of which are much closer to the retrograde policies hatched in conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institution, Fordham Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, than to the values of the many millions who voted for the democratic change he promised. As is well known, these think tanks share an agenda not for strengthening public schooling, but for dismantling it and replacing it with a private market in consumable educational services.
Duncan characterized the goal of Renaissance 2010 creating the new market in public education as a "movement for social justice." He invoked corporate investment terms to describe reforms explaining that the 100 new schools [charter] would leverage influence on the other 500 schools in Chicago. Redefining schools as stock investments he said, "I am not a manager of 600 schools. I'm a portfolio manager of 600 schools and I'm trying to improve the portfolio." He claimed that education can end poverty. He explained that having a sense of altruism is important, but that creating good workers is a prime goal of educational reform and that the business sector has to embrace public education. "We're trying to blur the lines between the public and the private," he said. He argued that a primary goal of educational reform is to get the private sector to play a huge role in school change in terms of both money and intellectual capital. He also attacked the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), positioning it as an obstacle to business-led reform. He also insisted that the CTU opposes charter schools (and, hence, change itself), despite the fact that the CTU runs ten such schools under Renaissance 2010. Despite the representation in the popular press of Duncan as conciliatory to the unions, his statements and those of others at the symposium belied a deep hostility to teachers unions and a desire to end them (all of the charters created under Ren2010 are deunionized)."
In March of 2013, Chicago parents, teachers, and citizens held a three-day march across the city to stop school closings, but 47 were shut down. Twelve thousand Chicago children are walking new, often longer, routes to school this fall—after Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed schools (almost all) in poor, Black and Latino neighborhoods. Given its high rate of gun violence, the city dealt with the disruption by expanding its "Safe Passage" program. Police and firefighters were on the job and the city ended up spending $16 million to hire low-wage temps to monitor children to and from school. The upshot? Emanuel hijacked neighborhood schools and later had to police his decision. But, what is being put in their place? Charter schools. It is easy to see that Emanuel, Duncan, and Obama do not really care about the children. It's the money to be made and the direct assault to control public schools.
A retired history teacher from Chicago had written this commentary on March 23,2013,
"It was a grim Thursday afternoon on March 21st as the news trickled out that 61 Chicago school buildings would be closed and that 54 school programs will be axed. The closings are heavily clustered in the poorest mostly African American and Latino neighborhoods, where decades of disinvestment and economic apartheid have taken a heavy toll on the residents. Many people have moved away from these communities, driven out by the lack of jobs, the meager resources given to the schools, the inadequate city services and the resulting crime and violence. Many believe that the forced exodus is part of a land grab for real estate interests who will move in to gentrify these areas.
On the South and West Sides of the city, where the closings are hitting hardest, poverty is a policy, not an accident. The Chicago financial elite, which could provide jobs and rational investment, has chosen displacement over renewal, ethnic cleansing over neighborhood stabilization. As the Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel is the public face of this prairie plutocracy."
Obama's "Race to the Top," a $4.35 billion federal competitive grant program through the Recovery Act, mandated that states tie high stakes to test scores. In a bid for money, cash-strapped and reform-frenzied states rewrote their education laws, dropping caps on charter schools in order to permit students from struggling neighborhood schools to have a "choice" to transfer out of them. It also tied teacher job security to student test scores. States were rewarded for promising to reproduce the same plan Duncan implemented in Chicago. As a result, charter schools are mainstream. As of now the ratio is 1 to 20—one charter student for every 20 public school students in the United States.
New York Data-Mining
The mayor of New York changed the face of the American public school system. On August 1, 2006, New York Mayor Bloomberg took control of the public school system and power was transferred to city hall. Bloomberg took over 1200 schools and eliminated the city's 32 elected community school boards. Education officials closed 164 public schools around the city since 2002 over the objections of parents and teachers who wanted the schools fixed. A non-elected council called Panel for Education Policy [PEP] has the authority to make decisions with 13 seats, 8 selected by the Mayor, the other five appointed from the community. The city launched a "fair student-funding" formula, called weighted funding to provide additional resources to districts with high poverty and special-needs students. Bloomberg created a change in representative government. It's a move to deactivate the voice of elected representatives, teachers, and parents.
When the documentary called Waiting for Superman was released featuring Michelle Rhee, past controversial Chancellor from Washington D.C., parents, citizens, and teachers from New York issued a rebuttal to the film called the Inconvenient Truth About Waiting for Superman which tells the real truth about the takeover of public schools by charters. It exposes the forcing of students to leave the neighborhood, and how teachers are frustrated with the high stakes tests which evaluating them based on the results on how well students perform on tests. Inconvenient Truth highlights, with film clips of actual real-life experiences, how public school parents, students, neighborhoods and educators are being impacted and harmed by so-called reforms. Please watch this excellent one-hour video at http://vimeo.com/41994760 to get an understanding of the impact of the transfer of power. (See my notes at the end of this article regarding two issues that I disagree with that may actually perpetuate the adverse agenda that they are intending to stop.]
Data is a must for the business model to function. There is a New York update to the controversy over FERPA (Family Education Rights in Privacy Act), regarding allowing data-mining with personally identifiable information, a cloud based repository for data. Parents have filed a lawsuit against Commissioner King, the New York Department of Education, and the New York Board of Regents for violating student privacy by releasing personal student information to the InBloom corporation. Note the intrusive personal data on children that would be shared with outside vendors, thus violating a child's right to privacy:
InBloom Inc., established by a $100 million dollar grant from the Gates Foundation, was designed as a multi-state data store, to collect and format personal student data and make it available to vendors to help them data mine, develop and market their software learning products…. The information to be shared with inBloom and other vendors will include the names of all public and charter school students, their addresses, phone numbers, emails, grades, test scores, race and economic status, disability and health diagnoses, their attendance and suspension records, and any services they receive. (Source)
This lawsuit is great news, but there is a need for a federal investigation to expose how Obama "unlocked" data, thus allowing data trafficking with third party vendors like inBloom across the United States. The re-disclosure of data means data is collected from the local level on students by the state information systems, and a written agreement is drawn up with a third party contractor to re-disclose the data.
Data collection is the foundation for the Common Core business model to function as a national market where children are a commodity. Since data was "unlocked" by Obama in January, 2012, FERPA (Family Education Rights in Privacy Act) regulations were changed allowing personally identifiable information [PII] from school records to be given to third party contractors. The definition for " school official" was changed to allow any outside vendor or contractor to use PII for research to design curriculum, software, digital curriculum, and "user interaction information" collected by learning software systems to research teaching and interventions of individual students.
If a Private School Takes Federal Money They Must Take the Test
Washington D.C. is the first city to experience federal choice money for private and religious schools originally called DC-OSP (Opportunity Scholarship Program, 2003, D.C. School Choice Incentive Act) the first federally-funded, private school voucher program in the country run by the D.C. mayor. Reauthorized, HR 471 is now called called SOAR (Scholarships For Opportunity and Results), sponsored by Republican John Boehner. The bill authorizes a 20-20-20 plan—$20 million for private vouchers, $20 million for Charter schools, $20 million for public schools in DC for analysis.
This legislation lays out specifically that if a private school takes federal money, there are requirements that would mandate certain reporting requirements from private schools participating in the DC-OSP. It would also require such schools to administer a national norm-reference standardized test in reading and math. Take the money—take the test. But, what is the scenario when this so-called choice "follows the child"? If a religious private school doesn't accept the grant voucher agenda, will it be forced to accept a "choice child" when the federal ESEA is passed? Yes. The school will be forced under federal discrimination laws to accept the "choice child." Once the private religious school accepts the Title I "choice child," the child must take the test. But notice: if the private school is not teaching Common Core, the children will likely fail the test, and the school will fail. What government funds, government controls. Follow the money trail.
Will The Real Agenda for Charter Schools Please Stand Up!
Charter schools are privately run, but they receive public money and, as already noted, an increasing number of these schools are being run on a for-profit basis. The federal government is subsidizing the CREDIT ENHANCEMENT FOR CHARTER SCHOOL FACILITIES PROGRAM, providing grants to eligible entities to permit them to enhance the credit of charter schools so that charter schools can access private-sector and other non-federal capital in order to acquire, construct, and renovate facilities at a reasonable cost. The tax code makes charter schools very lucrative.
Statistics have proven that where charter schools have proliferated it is more likely that the public schools have experienced financial stress due to the transfer of public assets and institutions into the hands of private corporations. The "New Markets Tax Credit" program that became law toward the end of the Clinton presidency allow firms to invest in charters and other projects located in "underserved" areas, and these schools can collect a generous tax credit up to 39% to offset their costs. Private investors are flocking to charter schools. There is a huge risk factor for any local school district in a state that has passed laws promoting "choice"—especially with an easy approval process for new charters with no caps on expansion. "Race to the Top" grants exacerbate this situation because states promised to drop their caps on charter schools when they took the money.
Charter public schools soak your local tax base, putting monies into a school run by for-profit investors. They have an ideal opportunity to collect a cut of your property taxes. A well-titled article in Forbes, "Charter School Gravy Train Runs Express To Fat City," pointedly remarks: "About the only thing charters do well is limit the influence of teachers' unions. And fatten their investors' portfolios." (Source) The article explains:
On Thursday, July 25, 2013, dozens of bankers, hedge fund types and private equity investors gathered in New York to hear about the latest and greatest opportunities to collect a cut of your property taxes. Of course, the promotional material for the Capital Roundtable's conference on "private equity investing in for-profit education companies" didn't put it in such crass terms, but that's what's going on….
Charter schools are frequently a way for politicians to reward their cronies. In Ohio, two firms operate 9% of the state's charter schools and are collecting 38% of the state's charter school funding increase this year….
In Florida, the for-profit school industry flooded legislative candidates with $1.8 million in donations last year. "Most of the money," reports The Miami Herald, "went to Republicans, whose support of charter schools, vouchers, online education and private colleges has put public education dollars in private-sector pockets."…
So attractive is the math, according to a 2010 article by Juan Gonzalez in the New York Daily News, "that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years."
In the Capital Roundtable Conference advertisement it states,
So 2013, and beyond, will see numerous for-profit companies making inroads into public and non-profit education by taking over large swaths of the market. Consider—
• The entire education sector now represents nearly 9 percent of the U.S. GDP.
• Merger and acquisition activity in for-profit education last year surpassed activity at the peak of the Internet boom.
• More and more non-profit colleges are hitting the wall and seeking investors to help them transform into for-profit institutions." [See Title IV, Higher Education Reauthorization, ed.]
Governor Jeb Bush is in the forefront of this push for charter schools with his Foundation For Excellence in Education. But don't be mislead into thinking that charter schools are just a Republican thing. Big-city Democrats, like Philadelphia Democratic Mayor Nutter, currently the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, closed 23 public schools this past summer—replaced by charters. In 2009, charters were 15% of the District budget. In 2014, they will be 30% of the District budget. Chicago, of course, is another Democratic stronghold.
Minnesota's leading newspaper, the Star Tribune, recounts the sordid history of its charter school movement:
Minnesota's charter school movement, which sparked a national rethinking of public schooling nearly two decades ago, has been infected by an out-of-control financing system fueled by junk bonds, insider fees and lax oversight. (Source)
Another article in the Star Tribune, "Charter school fails and bondholders get bailout," tells more of the story:
While junk-bond promoters claim taxpayers will never be forced to cover the costs of a failed charter school built with state lease-aid funds, that's exactly what happened in St. Paul.
The deal dates to 2000, when American Express purchased $8.3 million in bonds used to convert the old Science Museum of Minnesota into a charter school called the Minnesota Business Academy. The project also received $1 million in community development funds from the city of St. Paul….
In exchange for a hefty 8 percent interest rate, American Express accepted the risk of default and nonpayment.
In less than a year, the school was faltering. There were cost overruns and fundraising shortfalls, and the school was forced to borrow another $1.6 million.
To pay off its debts, the school needed 440 students, with each student representing more than $1,000 in annual lease-aid payments. But the plan backfired, and total enrollment crashed to 292 in 2004.
In 2005, city officials approved another bond offering that allowed the school to reorganize its finances. American Express got $6 million, while the city recovered a total of $451,352. The unsecured creditors were paid 10 cents on the dollar. "The corporate folks got their dough," said St. Paul City Council Member Lee Helgen, who voted against the bond issue."(Source)
Star Tribune reporter Tony Kennedy, published an article in 2011 titled "State charter schools program is 'out of control,' Junk bonds fuel a building spree, but schools are more crowded, insiders are taking fees, and state regulators can't do much about it." His article divulged the following alarming statistics:
In the past decade, 18 charter schools have been built with $178 million in junk bonds, with financing costs on some projects chewing up nearly a quarter of the funds raised. Twelve more charter schools have taken steps to buy or build facilities, and the state projects annual spending on lease aid to reach $54 million in 2013, up from just $1.1 million in 1998.
To lure the investors they need for new buildings, some educators are abandoning the intimate campuses their founders envisioned and are building large schools that look more like the conventional institutions that some families are fleeing. Some charter school advocates say the build-your-own trend could undermine an education movement built on small class size and parental involvement….
State lawmakers are frustrated by the building boom. Since 2000, at least 64 public school buildings in the metro area closed because of declining enrollment. Charter schools are responsible for recruiting away some of those students.
Follow the Money
The flight to charter schools leave districts vulnerable for closure. Moody's Investors Service issued a report on October 15, 2013 that "Charter Schools Pose Greatest Credit Challenge to School Districts in Economically Weak Urban Areas."
…Tiphany Lee-Allen, the Moody's Associate Analyst who co-authored the report [said] "Districts may face institutional barriers to cutting staff levels, capital footprints and benefit costs over the short term given the intricacies of collective bargaining contracts – leaving them with underutilized buildings and ongoing growth in personnel costs."
Charter schools can pull students and revenues away from districts faster than the districts can reduce their costs, says Moody's. As some of these districts trim costs to balance out declining revenues, cuts in programs and services will further drive students to seek alternative institutions including charter schools.
"Many older, urban areas that have experienced population and tax base losses, creating stress for their local school districts, have also been areas where charter schools have proliferated," says Moody's. "Among the cities where over a fifth of the students are enrolled in charter schools are Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. Nationwide about one in 20 students is in a charter school." (Source)
Consider the ramifications all of these statistics. Public schools will close, locally elected schools boards will be forced out of their positions. Representative government is diminished. Choice sets up this agenda and Charter schools are the end product. But meanwhile businesses are raking in the cash.
Bloomberg News reported that "Goldman to lend $25M for charter schools."
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the most profitable Wall Street firm, will lend $25 million to a nonprofit community-development organization to finance 16 charter schools in New York City and New Jersey.
The nonprofit group, Local Initiatives Support Corp., will make the money available to the school operators during the next two years, Goldman Sachs and LISC, both based in New York, said Tuesday in a statement. The chairman of LISC, according to the group's website, is Robert Rubin, former U.S. Treasury secretary. [under the Clinton Administration, ed.]
Charter schools are nonsectarian, public institutions that operate independently of local boards of education in the U.S. under special charters. Goldman Sachs's Urban Investment Group has committed about $150 million for charter schools in New York and New Jersey, according to the statement.
The financing may allow the charter schools involved to obtain as much as $100 million in additional capital, credit-enhanced by funds awarded by the U.S. Department of Education. (Source)
That was three years ago.
The Detroit Disaster
Legislation in Michigan, under Republican leadership Governor Snyder, House Bill 6004 and Senate Bill 1358 expanded a separate and statewide school district called the "Education Achievement Authority" (EAA), overseen by a governor-appointed chancellor and functioning outside the authority of the State Board of Education or state school superintendent. These schools are exempt from the same laws and quality measures of community-governed public schools. The EAA can seize unused school buildings (built and financed by local taxpayers) and force sale or lease to charter, non-public or EAA schools.
A letter written by the Superintendent Rob Glass of Bloomfield Hills in Michigan on November 28, 2012, tells the story very distinctly:
Dear Parents and Citizens: This is an urgent call to action affecting your Bloomfield Hills Schools and public education in Michigan. A package of bills designed to corporatize and dismantle public education is being hastily pushed through this current 'lame duck' legislative session. If we do not take immediate action, I believe great damage will be done to public education, including our school system.
House Bill 5923: Creates several new forms of charter and online schools with no limit on the number. Bundled with HB 6004/ SB 1358, many of these schools could be created by the EAA. Public schools are not allowed to create these new schools unless they charter them. Selective enrollment/dis-enrollment policies will likely lead to greater segregation in our public schools. This bill creates new schools without changing the overall funding available, further diluting resources for community-governed public schools.
Senate Bill 620: Known as the 'Parent Trigger' bill, would allow the lowest achieving 5% of schools to be converted to a charter school while allowing parents or teachers to petition for the desired reform model. This bill will not directly affect our district, but disenfranchises voters, ends their local control, and unconstitutionally hands taxpayer-owned property over to for-profit companies. Characterized as parent-empowerment, this bill does little to develop deep, community-wide parent engagement and organization.
On May 6, 2013, the Detroit Free Press covered the continuing controversy over the EAA during a visit from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan:
Scott [Brenda Scott Academy, a school taken over by the EAA, ed.] is one of 15 Detroit public schools [DPS] operated by the EAA, which has been at the center of controversy in recent weeks. The EAA was established in 2011 with [Republican Governor] Snyder's support through an interlocal agreement between Detroit Public Schools and Eastern Michigan University. Its objective is to take control over and reform the lowest performing 5% of schools. It does not operate on traditional grade levels, but has an online curriculum that personalizes learning so students progress through school at their own pace.
The EAA has experienced some budget shortfalls in its inaugural year operating schools, and used DPS as a conduit to borrow $12 million. The secretary of the board, mayoral candidate Mike Duggan, stepped down from the board Friday after the loans were made public, saying he didn't want the EAA to be drawn into the mayoral campaign.
State Sen. Bert Johnson, a Democrat from Highland Park, gave Duncan a letter today asking him and President Barack Obama "to seriously consider the ramifications of giving the appearance of tacitly supporting this failed experiment," a reference to the EAA.
"What the Republicans are doing does not work, is not working and will not work," Johnson said. (Source)
In 2011, Detroit Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb hired the National Association of Charter School Authorizers to help evaluate potential operators as part of a plan to transform 41 city schools into privatized charter schools. That's the same group that the year before worked with Chicago to select charter school operators—and worked in New Orleans in 2005 to transform neighborhood schools into business model factories. Bobb was given expanded powers by the state legislature, including the power to modify contracts and terminate collective bargaining agreements with teachers and fire elected officials. He said he intended to use these powers and issued layoff notices to all of the teachers in the school system, which will give him or other managers the power to call back or reassign teachers without having to consider seniority rights.
In 2009 Secretary of Education Duncan referred to Detroit public schools as "ground zero" for institutional education reform. Academic bankruptcy (i.e., using competency or standards-based tests to target a school for takeover or closure for underachievement), charter schools, EAA, and bankruptcy is ambush to the bigger agenda, taking taxes and school property paid for by you and giving it to others for profit.
"Ground zero", Secretary of Education Duncan's description for Detroit "renaissance" for charter school takeover in a city deemed financially broke, has also had some rippling undertones for other cities. Moody's reported on December 5, 2012:
CitiyMayors.com reported that
In 2009, Moody's Investors Service put all local governments in the United States on negative credit outlook. It was the first time such a blanket report was ever issued for cities, towns, counties, and school districts. To date, the negative outlook remains. It's an understatement to say that local governments have been caught up in unfavorable financial and market trends since the economic downturn began in 2008. Local governments have cut services and laid off workers, including police officers and school teachers. The Wall Street Journal estimates that local government personnel reductions add a full percentage point to the nation's unemployment rate. (Source)
In another article, "Corporatist mission accomplished: charter schools strangling public schools," it was reported on November 13, 2013 that
A downgrade of the bond ratings of 53 Michigan school districts is proving what charter school opponents have long warned against: charter schools are diminishing public schools' ability to have stable budgets by siphoning off tax dollars into for-profit corporations.
Moody's cited "significant fiscal strain related to charter enrollment growth" stating that "A growing number of Michigan school districts" are facing "higher borrowing costs after downgrades by Moody." The article continues:
Justin Marlowe, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who has written about local government finance, said increased charter school competition and tight state budgets are squeezing the districts.
The "proliferation of charter schools and ongoing state budget problems have put more pressure on local school districts," Marlowe said, adding there "doesn't seem to be any immediate solutions unless we rethink how we finance school districts."
But as overall enrollment was falling, charter schools were growing….[bold in original] (Source)
The Plan for Losing Local Control
This is the plan. Rethinking how to finance school districts falls under the domain of the re-authorization of ESEA where funding follows the child. The system of property taxes must be dissolved and replaced by a more equitable plan. Elite Zip Codes and wealthier schools may no longer be a destination. Common Core and ESEA will level the playing field. Charter schools and choice will break the backs of public schools. All schools will be contract public schools. Teachers may come under contract from the state that certifies them. Parent trigger bills will allow parents and teachers to take over a school, in turn forming charter schools. Elected positions must be dissolved for a socialist takeover.
In Indiana right now there is a power struggle with Governor Pence's (R) newly formed agency called the Center for Education and Career Innovation (CECI) and the elected State Superintendent. The governors "power grab" is shifting resources and education policy matters to the unelected Center for Education and Career Innovation formed through an executive order. These unelected state authorities are pilots for regional economic development and job training. This is but another example of how a governor can take over, eliminating the representative authority and accountability of locally elected officials.
Another economic downturn could put most cities out of business. Bankrupt! This could be the point of no return for a declining America, the takeover of cities through fiscal control boards, a platform to usher in charter school takeover. CityMayors.com explains this concept:
A fiscal control board is a temporary team of "experts" appointed by the state that takes over the financial management and budgetary decisions of a local government that is about to default on its debt, cannot meet it payroll, or cannot provide basic services. Sometimes a state mandates a control board; in other cases, a local government requests one. Although the composition and responsibilities of control boards may vary, local elected officials invariably lose most authority over their government's revenues and expenditures. Often control boards have the power to issue debt or re-negotiate labor contracts.
Control boards are essentially an intensification of a state's existing authority over local governments. In normal times, states regulate local governments' finances by providing aid; capping local income, sales, and property taxes; requiring balanced local budgets; limiting local investment options; and mandating specific services. A control board is a mechanism by which states can impose, alter, or suspend such financial regulations to address the emergency needs of a particular local government. Control boards are not meant to be democratic, but efficient. Their focus is on re-establishing long-term fiscal stability, and the wishes of citizens and elected officials for particular services are often ignored. [emphasis added] (Source)
The downslide into fiscal crisis continues. During September, 23 schools were closed and more than 4,000 employees were laid off in Philadelphia.
The city pledge of $50 million that month allowed a thousand employees to come back, just enough to open the doors the first week of school.
"We had cut all assistant principals, all guidance counselors, all art, all music, all sports, all secretaries," [said Philadelphia School Superintendent, William Hite].
Philadelphia's school crisis has been building for years. Debt and pension obligations piled up as students moved out to charter schools or the suburbs. Federal budget cuts have cost the city $130 million in aid. (Source)
It's a familiar pattern showing up in the country's biggest school districts over the last 18 months: Chicago laid off 3,000 teachers and closed 49 schools. In Cleveland, 500 teachers and staff lost their jobs in 2012. And in Los Angeles, 4,000 teachers and staff were unemployed.
And then there is Katrina and New Orleans Charter School Agenda. The devastation of Katrina to the poorest of poor in New Orleans cannot be overstated. But Republican Governor Jindal's overhaul of public education in New Orleans can equally be said to be devastating. More than half of all public school students in New Orleans attend a charter school, more than any other US major city.
How many more stories do Americans need to hear before we all acknowledge there is something terribly wrong going on? The onslaught of charter schools is astounding. More and more pieces of America are going up for auction. How far down this road can we go without a collapse?
Senator Reid and Legislation: Technology and Bandwidth
In the Department of Education 'Race to the Top' grant for this past year there were some interesting reports made under paragraphs "Lessons Learned." Schools that are not properly wired for the new technology architecture must come up to speed before the agenda can proceed.
Since states and districts need to understand the requirements to administer the computer-based assessment system with sufficient time to procure any additional devices or improve bandwidth or internal wiring in schools, PARCC established minimum technology guidelines in April 2012 which they updated in December 2012. This may limit the consortium's options regarding the platform or its ability to develop an interoperable system.
Funding for technology, bandwidth, rewiring and electronic devices in the hands of every person, is a must for the agenda to proceed. This is why both Zuckerberg (of Facebook) and Bill Gates are funding $100 million dollars in San Francisco toward broadband updating. This means time is running out. Technology will soon catch up.
Of course, the push is on to pass this legislation. Senator Reid holds "choice" in his hands if he releases the reauthorization of ESEA to conference between the two chambers of Congress and then out for a vote. Note: both Republicans and Democrats have assisted, Obama will be credited for pushing America over the edge by changing our system of government through publicly-funded, so-called "private" charter schools, creating unelected school boards as the end goal. It is frightening to see Democrats scrambling for the power of "choice" money when Republicans have always strongly supported "choice" in private and religious schools. The two pieces of federal legislation—the House with a majority of Republicans, the Senate with a majority of Democrats—proves the point that they are working together fighting over who gets the profits from this robbery. It's like insider trading, only worse. Our children and country are at stake. (See: Source and Source)
The Struggle For Survival
For those families that live in wealthy school districts who think their schools are great, here's the bad news. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sounded an alert never before heard in America, in his now-famous speech denigrating "White suburban moms' delivered in Richmond, Virginia on Nov. 13, 2013. Duncan blurted out this statement in frustration to parents objecting to Common Core,
"It's fascinating to me that some of the pushback [against Common Core, ed.] is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn't as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn't quite as good as they thought they were, and that's pretty scary," Duncan said. "You've bet your house and where you live and everything on, 'My child's going to be prepared.' That can be a punch in the gut." (Source)
According to the Obama/Duncan equalization plan, an elite Zip Code may no longer be a destination. There is much more to this statement that clearly shows an underlying hatred against capitalism, for families who worked hard, who live in the suburbs, who own a home, and must pay property taxes. Parents are counting on the school district where they chose to buy a house so that their kids can go to a good school, but they are being scorned because they do not believe Common Core is good for their children. These parents intuitively know that something is wrong.
It is a punch-in-the-gut feeling and knowing that the system is somehow skewed. Education and common sense has been turned upside down. The tests do not measure academics anymore. And Secretary Duncan has news for you. His Big Brother message to the parents who live in the suburbs is saying in effect—"We will change how business was done in the past. We will redistribute the tax base so all schools and funding are equal and mandate that you, your child, and your teacher will bend under the will of subjective tests and dumbed down Common Core, so that all children will be equal. If they don't test well, because they have the strong individualistic attitudes and values. We will fire your teachers. Your children won't succeed in our new system. They won't be accepted to college, and your world will come crashing down. That is our intent. We will force your schools to change and your child, too." So….
What are we going to do about it?
If the Reauthorization of ESEA happens as noted, be prepared for a tsunami of political oppression. Public schools are going down quickly as a relic of the past.
The obvious conclusion is that we no longer will have elected representatives in our local school district. The impact of the collective and overlapping dissolution of elected local, county and state officials remains to be seen. Our tax money will be pooled toward an economic authority, or controlled from the state which has collected the individual, longitudinal data so that funding will be distributed equally across the economic spectrum for each child. No one is sure what will happen to property values when the transfer of power is wrested away from private landowners (taxpayers) and local elected officials.
Charter schools, privately owned and publicly funded, will replace public education under the auspice of an outside third party authorizer and considered a contract school. If teachers are not teaching Common Core, they will be fired and replaced with younger submissive, compliant drones. Teachers will be contracted by the state, appearing on a list of prospective positions, but apply through the school district.
Charter schools will break the back of unions, thus leaving teachers with no voice. When private and religious schools are forced to take "choice" students, they will learn that they must teach Common Core and submit to national testing. You can multiply school closings in all major cities and towns attributed to federal choice programs, and the expansion of charter schools with governors and mayors from both red and blue states. All of this downfall puts no caps on charter schools. When public schools fail, charter schools using public funds are there to take their place, their property, and their funding using your hard earned tax money without your voice and without your vote.
The outlook is pretty solemn. We are witnessing the demise one of our greatest American foundations—your neighborhood school, thanks to "choice" and charter schools, Republican and Democratic shysters and the Obama agenda together are hell-bent to get it done and finish the job.
The Good News Plan
What is the answer? Your state MUST put caps on charter schools or your local neighborhood school will be crushed. Your local school board must fight for their independence against a mayor or governor seeking to destroy their elected positions in your community. They must file suit to keep their positions. We must also fight against the federal legislation and meet with your elected officials to stop choice and vouchers in that reauthorization of ESEA where the funding will follow the child. You must also fight the Common Core Standards and do not be side-tracked by the debate of which standard is best.
Fight the transfer of power that are putting in place to destroy traditional education. Refuse the psychoanalyzing of your student at school. Stress academic solutions. Support your traditional teachers; they are being forced to change or be fired. Also, insist on a federal investigation against FERPA and the personal data-trafficking on your individual child that was unlocked by Obama. This is a tall order, but it can be done. It's called local control and states rights.
In conclusion, a story about the community of Bridgeport, Connecticut is worthy of national attention. A group of citizens filed suit against Mayor Finch for dismantling the locally elected school board. Finch, along with Superintendent Paul Vallas, who had previously been hired to run the schools in Chicago, New Orleans, and Philadelphia, has had a set back. The challenging group won their seats back and they won control of the majority this past election. They have promised that Vallas will be gone. This is how a beneficial power-play is made, and this can be done in your city or a city near you.
Good luck, and may God bless this free land of ours.
Author's Note: Concernig the "Inconvenient Truth About Waiting For Superman" Conclusions. The video responds to the adverse conditions in New York facing public schools with a list of solutions at the end of the video. I disagree with two of the issues that were listed. # 5 suggests equity in funding. This is part of the bigger agenda to change tax structures. #8 wants pre-school funding and early childhood programs with federal funding involved. Federal money drives compliance. This is the Obama agenda of changing attitudes and values at an earlier age, womb to career. This is part of the bigger agenda.
For more information: Order the "Exposing the Global Road to Ruin through Education" disc set with historical documentation from researchers across the United States http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Global+road+to+ruin+education&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3AGlobal+road+to+ruin+education
Read Charlotte Iserbyt's historical books, deliberate dumbing down of america and Soviets In the Classroom, which detail the history documenting how our country has been taken over from within through massive education funding, treaties, and deception. Iserbyt identifies names, both Republican and Democrat. This extremely important background information and her expertise will connect you to the 'internationalization' of education and inevitable global citizenship. Whatever name you want to call the control—Socialism or Communism—the agenda is people control, and the United States has been the prize. Total Quality Management will force the ultimate compliance to the system-individual people control. See www.deliberatedumbingdown.com for more articles on these topics.
Source Material for this article included:
Mayor Action Guide, Source
National Governor's Association Push for Charter School Expansion, Source
Investing in Education, Source
Bridgeport, Conn Board files suit to keep elected positions, Source and
Arne Duncan on " white suburban moms."http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/19/duncan-takes-heat-over-description-common-core-foes-as-white-suburban-moms/
Michelle Rhee Controversy with test erasures, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-03-28-1Aschooltesting28_CV_N.htm
DC Public Schools Flagged For Erasures, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-03-28-1Aschooltesting28_CV_N.htm
Chicago Mayor Daley's Renaisance 2010, http://www.truth-out.org/archive/item/81572:obamas-betrayal-of-public-education-arne-duncan-and-the-corporate-model-of-schooling
Chicago spends $17 million On Safe Passage, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/education/in-chicago-campaign-to-provide-safe-passage-on-way-to-school.html?_r=0
Chicago Safe Passage Routes-Unsafe, http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/22506584-418/safe-passage-routes-rife-with-sex-offenders.html
Chicago School Closings, http://open.salon.com/blog/bobbosphere/2013/03/24/the_chicago_school_closings_finding_truth_amidst_the_lies#
New York Parents Lawsuit, http://www.classsizematters.org/ny-lawsuit-filed-to-protect-student-privacy-and-block-inbloom/ and http://www.classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/lawsuit-Article-78-request-for-TRO.pdf and http://digital.hechingerreport.org/content/big-data-and-schools-education-nirvana-or-privacy-nightmare_402/?preview=true
The Village Voice, Eva Moskowitz, the Invasion of Charter Schools, http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-01-30/news/Eva-Moskowitz-Bloomberg-Charter-Schools/
Credit Enhancement for Charter Facilities, http://www2.ed.gov/programs/charterfacilities/index.html
Charter School Gravy Train, http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2013/09/10/charter-school-gravy-train-runs-express-to-fat-city/
Capital Roundtable For Profit Education Conference-Private Equity Investing in For-Profit Education Companies ENCORE ROUNDTABLE, January, 2013, http://capitalroundtable.com/masterclass/For-Profit-Education-Conference.html July 25,2013, http://capitalroundtable.com/masterclass/CapitalRoundtableEducationPEConference2013.html
Charter Schools Pose Greatest Credit Challenge, https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-Charter-schools-pose-greatest-credit-challenge-to-school-districts–PR_284505
Troubled US Local Gov't, http://www.citymayors.com/finance/us-fiscal-control-boards.html
New York, Goldman Sachs Partners with LISC and Charter Schools: http://www.lisc.org/content/article/detail/18854
"Goldman to lend $25M for charter schools, http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20101109/FREE/101109856
Minnesota- State Charter Schools Out of Control: http://www.startribune.com/investigators/75464082.html
Charter Schools Fail Bondholders Get Bailout, http://www.startribune.com/local/77654822.html
Detroit named Ground Zero by Duncan: http://www.freep.com/article/20130506/NEWS01/305060088/Education-Secretary-Arne-Duncan-visits-Detroit
Chicago Reform that Duncan Left Behind: http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/09/the_school_reform_showdown_of_the_year_in_the_chicago_arne_duncan_left_behind.html
Chicago Charter Schools Equitable Funding: http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/news/2013/08/27/51758/record-are-charter-schools-and-district-run-school-treated-equally
Chicago and Philadelphia Closing Schools and Funding Charters: http://www.labornotes.org/2013/09/chicago-and-philadelphia-closing-schools-and-funding-charters
Obama's Betrayal of Public Education, http://www.truth-out.org/archive/item/81572:obamas-betrayal-of-public-education-arne-duncan-and-the-corporate-model-of-schooling
The Inconvenient Truth About 'Waiting a for Superman'-rebuttal video against charters, http://vimeo.com/41994760
PARCC Grant Document-LESSONS LEARNED page 22, http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop-assessment/reports/parcc-year-2.pdf
Documents used in this article are used for research and educational purposes. Fair Use in Copyrighted Materials for Educational and Research Materials Section 107 of Title 17 of the US Code: http://www.copyright.gov/title17
Common Core Global Communion PART 2
Democratic Engagement-The New Term for Global Citizenship Beginning at Birth Through College
Once the envy of the world, the brightest, most productive, creative, economic power the world has ever known, the United States will fall to its knees. Not because we don't have smart citizens, because we have indoctrinated citizens who have had heavy doses of psychological manipulation and mastery learning and cooperative education since kindergarten. Remember, Common Core Standards identify Johnny in the classroom, and federal funding, ESEA Title I and IDEA (Special Ed), (HR 5 plus SB 1094), proposed by the Obama administration, the Democratic held Senate, and the Republicans pushing Charter Schools and Choice to individualize educational plans for EACH student, there will no longer be doses of manipulation. It will be constant manipulation by computer programming and Master Teachers, no matter how long it takes. Different models have kids graduating from high school at the age of 19, 20 or older. More indoctrination will be needed before those students are released as global workers, but the indoctrination must begin at birth.
Cradle to Age 21
Remember, it doesn't matter that your child is smart or has a high IQ…what matters is the right attitudes and values. Benjamin Bloom's "whole child theory" of teaching, which is challenging the student's fixed beliefs, includes the affective domain and must be taught from early ages to change American thoughts and values. SB 1094 calls for testing 'across domains,' the whole child, values included starting at birth.This is why the Pennsylvania EQA is so important. The test, which was a model for the nation, shows you exactly what is wanted in the future citizen. This is why ACT, who developed Work Keys for career readiness, is creating career tests for Kindergarten. ("Five Year Old Put to the Test as Kindergarten Exams Gain Steam", by Stepheny Simon, Rueters,9-25-2012.) The earlier, the better, to mold cookie cutter kids ready to bow to the master plan after years of indoctrination. Career training for Kindergarten? Really? This is the "cradle to grave" indoctrination being put in place.
The Obama administration accelerated the trend in 2011 with a $500 million competitive grant to bolster early childhood education. States that pledged to assess all kindergarten kids earned extra points on their application. The Obama administration grant guidelines encouraged states to develop holistic assessments that measure a 5- year olds social, emotional, and physical development as well as their cognitive skills ( the whole child). About a dozen states including Georgia and Maryland have developed such broad assessments according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Now, Obama is proposing paying for pre-school for early detection and molding of attitudes and values. Attitudes and values are NOT so hardened or fixed if caught in early years. Senate Bill 1094 starts funding at birth through age 21.
Lately, the interesting thing about the education establishment is that they are sometimes blatantly saying what they are doing. The public is just not catching on as clearly can be seen in this article, "ACT to Roll Out Career and College Readiness Tests for 3rd-10th Grades" By Caralee Adams on July 2, 2012, Ed Week Oct 9 2012, "The assessment would look beyond academics to get a complete picture of the whole student," he says ( Jon Erickson, the president of education for ACT, the Iowa City, Iowa-based nonprofit testing company.) "There would be interest inventories for students, as well as assessment of behavioral skills for students and teachers to evaluate." This statement tells you a lot about the agenda.
Yes, each state is agreeing to the agenda of the Common Core Standards, as well as, all testing that is aligning to the NAEP. Standardization and accountability will be aligned internationally as the Bologna model strives to undermine our colleges and universities with their indoctrination.
Civic Education and Democratic Engagement is being taught in the United States as Global Citizenship-the dismantling of the idea of patriotism, individuality, and greatness in the world. Will American students bite the bait of indoctrination that our country is on the same level as other countries and to merge with other nations? Does the "Occupy" movement understand the implications? Do young voters know the consequence of changing the American concept of freedom? Lets hope so. The goal…acceptance of a global new world order. We are a nation at risk.
The Degree Qualification Profile-A New University Diploma-What College Students Must Know and Be Able To Do in Order to Graduate in Higher Ed-With International Standards
While the Common Core is sweeping the nation, HR 5 and SB 1094 will ultimately fund the take-over of education in the United States. Colleges appear to be the next target for the future to change and mold young adult student attitudes. Civic Engagement is on the move to redefine "quality" to be sure ALL college students are drawn into the agenda. The updated proposal to control higher education by providing compatible and comparable international benchmarking is escalating toward the international Bologna Model. Pilot projects are being implemented now in three states as models…Indiana, Minnesota, and Utah. The Bologna model refers to "tuning". Tuning means matching US standards to the European international standards model. As of today, many colleges are turning a deaf ear to this model, thankfully. But the international push is on. You can be sure that NAEP, National Assessment of Educational Progress, and its international clone, the IEAP, International Assessment of Educational Progress, will be used for data comparisons in the international testing. Once standardization is complete, the psychological experimentation and manipulation to change older American students towards this socialistic, communistic system will move at triple speed targeted to individuals in college
January, 2011, the Obama Administration released its Road Map for civic learning, "Advancing Civic Learning and Engagement in Democracy." In October, 2012, the National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement released a new study that explains how the convergence to world citizenship will function for our nation's colleges called, " A Crucible Moment-College Learning and Democracy's Future." Great detail is placed on the development of personality and values of the graduate student. (Page 4) This current proposal of civic education is a direct link to the European nations agreement for converging their higher education systems of standards-international benchmarks for all colleges world-wide. Many papers have been written that call for the standardization of all colleges, worldwide, to agree on global standards and outcomes. The doublespeak begins: entrusting a student's responsibility and influence on civic values, assumptions; responsibilities to a wider public is stressed. Critical inquiry, also known as higher order thinking skills, universal democratic principles, deliberation and bridge building across differences, are central to building world citizenship. The new degree is called the Degree Qualification Profile.(page 54)
This is the complete list of international values that each college student must attain for their degree listed in the Crucible document:
Focus on this partial list:
Respect for freedom & human dignity,
Open-mindedness,Tolerance, Justice, Equality, Ethical integrity,
Responsibility to a larger good,
Collective Action,
Integration of knowledge, skills, and examined values to inform actions taken in concert with other people,
Moral discernment and behavior,
Navigation of political systems and processes, both formal and informal,
Public problem solving with diverse partners,
Compromise, civility, and mutual respect.
This is the EQA, the NAEP, and the Common Core-College and Career Ready Standards for college students. How do you measure and score integrity, empathy and justice or other subjective values? Here we go again. The push is on to psychoanalyze and internationalize college students, too. (Just in case a student from homeschool or a Christian school slipped through the cracks.)
The Degree Qualification Profile, funded through the Lumina Foundation, defines 'expected learning outcomes that graduates need for work, citizenship, global participation, and life' that aligns with the Bologna Model. This is the blueprint that will force the standardization of college degrees to be equally and universally accepted worldwide. The Bologna Process ensures that the United States is prepared for convergence and urges the United States "for your eyes only" to take the most far reaching and ambitious reform of higher education ever undertaken. Our nation's colleges and universities are far from approving this agenda. However, the agenda exists and is moving forward to standardize the process.
The Lumina Foundation explains that, "Preparing students for responsible citizenship is a widely acknowledged purpose of higher education. Like other forms of application, civic inquiry requires the integration of knowledge and skills acquired in both the broad curriculum and in the student's specialized field. But because civic preparation also requires engagement — that is, practice in applying those skills to representative questions and problems in the wider society — it should be considered a discrete category of learning."
"Higher education is experimenting with new ways to prepare students for effective democratic and global citizenship. Virtually all of these efforts use experiential or field-based learning as a means to develop civic insight, competence in public affairs and the ability to contribute to the common good. By definition field-based learning about civic issues is likely to immerse students in public debate about contested positions."
"In developing civic competence, students engage a wide variety of perspectives and evidence and form their own reasoned views on public issues. Civic Learning — which is related to but goes beyond the Intellectual Skill we have labeled "Engaging Diverse Perspectives" — also involves active engagement with others. Exposure to these different perspectives helps students develop their own responses to social, environmental and economic challenges at the local, national and global levels. "
The Bologna Model will first begin to introduce the ideas of unifying course credit, accountability and transferability internationally. The next steps are to ridicule the United States for no longer being on the "cutting edge" or the assumptions of world dominance to shame our universities and colleges into submission. The Executive Summary tells the story called the "macroeconomic theory of convergence". Surely, our universities and colleges nationwide have big enough egos and self assurance not to allow this to happen. We pray it so.
Executive Summary: "The undertaking is known as The Bologna Process, named for the Italian city that is home to Europe's oldest university, where the education ministers of 29 countries first agreed to the agenda and "action lines" that would bring down education borders in the same way that economic borders had been dissolved. That means harmonization, not standardization. When these national higher education systems work with the same reference points they produce a "zone of mutual trust" that most far reaching and ambitious reform of higher education ever undertaken. for their students. Everyone is singing in the same key, though not necessarily with the same tune. In terms reaching across geography and languages, let alone in terms of turning ancient higher education systems on their heads, the Bologna Process is the most far reaching and ambitious reform of higher education ever undertaken.
What has transpired since 1999 cannot be but lightly acknowledged in the United States. While still a work in progress, parts of the Bologna Process have already been imitated in Latin America, North Africa, and Australia. The core features of the Bologna Process have sufficient momentum to become the dominant global higher education model within the next two decades. Former Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings' Commission on the Future of Higher Education paid no attention whatsoever to Bologna, and neither did the U.S. higher education community in its underwhelming response to that Commission's report. Such purblind stances are unforgivable in a world without borders.
But since the first version of this monograph, a shorter essay entitled The Bologna Club: What U.S. Higher Education Can Learn from a Decade of European Reconstruction (Institute for Higher Education Policy, May 2008), U.S. higher education has started listening seriously to the core messages of the remarkable and difficult undertaking in which our European colleagues have engaged. Dozens of conferences have included panels, presentations, and intense discussions of Bologna approaches to accountability, access, quality assurance, credits and transfer, and, most notably, learning outcomes in the context of the disciplines. In that latter regard, in fact, three state higher education systems—Indiana, Minnesota, and Utah—have established study groups to examine the Bologna "Tuning" process to determine the forms and extent of its potential in U.S. contexts. Scarcely a year ago, such an effort would have been unthinkable.
Economist Jeffrey Sachs calls ours "the age of convergence," and, indeed, that is what we witness when U.S. higher education opens its borders to learning. We've had a good run, as the saying goes, but we are no longer at the cutting edge. U.S. higher education can no longer sail on the assumption of world dominance, oblivious to the creative energies, natural intelligence, and hard work of other nations. We cannot rely on 50 research universities and 50 selective liberal arts colleges—some of which boast budgets and endowments (however diminished) greater than those of entire countries—to carry the day for the mass of our students. We cannot live in a room of mirrors, claiming that we are so unique that nothing occurring beyond that room matters. Mirrors lead to delusions, and to short-term, positivistic bean counting. We are mesmerized by the immediacy of "how much," absent a historical "how well." It's time to break the mirrors. The point is not that other countries produce more degrees; it is that they just might be producing better degrees, certainly degrees whose reference points in student learning outcomes and meaning is transparent—something that cannot be said for the degrees we award.
The End of Higher Education and Freewill
Its all about equality and what is fair. Equalization across the board. Socialism. Those universities in the United States that think they are exceptional, well, think again. You are each a target for international tuning, equalization.The United States creeps closer to a world without borders. We are a nation at risk from losing all that's dear to us, freedom. The individualists of our country are being identified and psychoanalyzed. Strong willed students and leaders of the Constitution are zeroed in on for psychological cleansing and group thought. Will your child survive? Will our country survive?
It is up to us!
Read Charlotte Iserbyt's historical book, deliberate dumbing down of america and Soviets In the Classroom, which details the history documenting how our country has been taken over from within through massive education funding, treaties, and deception. She Identifies names and the who. This extremely important background information and her expertise will connect you to the 'internationalization' of education and inevitable global citizenship. Whatever name you want to call the control, socialism or communism, the agenda is people control, and the United States has been the prize.
Getting Inside the EQA Inventory, Pennsylvania Department of Education
Resources for Improvement, Citizenship, Pennsylvania Department of Education
Interrelationships to the Pennsylvania Quality Goals: http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED238146
NAEP Civics Frameworks: http://www.nagb.org/content/nagb/assets/documents/publications/frameworks/civicsframework-word.doc#_Toc234923502
Chapter Three: The Civics Assessment: Knowledge, Skills, and Dispositions
Tuning USA Indiana Committee. (2010). Tuning USA Indiana final report. Indianapolis, IN: Author.
Tuning USA Minnesota Committee. (2010). Tuning USA Minnesota final report. St. Paul, MN: Author.
Tuning USA Utah Committee. (2010). Tuning USA Utah final report. Salt Lake City, UT: Author.
Common Core Global Communion:
The Debate About Which Flavor of Poison For the Masses
Our nation is being hypnotized and manipulated by skillful propagandists. Most debates about Common Core are very off-track. Stay focused. This is a power-play. The Common Core Standards aligned to funding in federal legislation, HR 5 and
SB 1094, will ultimately have total control of education, nationalizing education in the United States of America. Common Core will be used to TRACK individual students to meet individual standards. By stopping the Common Core Standards in your state, the federal government will not have the legal authority to access your child for tracking individual workforce plans and funding attached to your student.
Choice legislation is waiting in the wings. Charter schools are lining up at the federal trough for Title I funding that will follow the child in the choice legislation. By stopping HR 5 and SB 1094, we can stop the funding that follows the student linked to choice at any private, public or charter school. This legislation will diminish representative government and feed the charter school socialist take-over of education. Common Core was needed first to identify the student.
This is Obama's Dream Come True: public funded- private charter schools with unelected school boards. This is a complete erosion of representative government; Control of K through 12 education; Obama expanding federal money for daycare starting at birth; the international connection, the Bologna Model, calling colleges in the United States to be "tuned" into this agenda of global convergence. Socialism is knocking on our front door and on all sides. We must act, now.
Overview of Propaganda.
The educrats want the debate to be off track away from the power that will be able to mandate to the individual student, just like the individual mandate in Obamacare. Do not agree to this power-play. The debate about which academics in the Common Core should be taught, is a side issue. It's like debating which flavor of poison should be given to everyone, when poison is the issue. The word is CONTROL. The national standards, the national curriculum, and national testing, are being put in place. Your child is called human capital that will be molded to fit the global child for the new world order. True academics are being replaced by dumbed down, subjective standards.
Choice and Charter School Take-Over of All Education
Obama's 'Race to the Top' model schools call for individual education or career plans (school to work) to be created for the Common Core based system. Did you get that parents? Common Core Standards will target your individual student for change, not just the school curriculum. Good teachers will be forced to teach to the standards. HR 5 and SB 1094 will complete the vicious circle by controlling the purse strings.
Common Core College and Career Standards were needed to identify Johnny in the classroom. Place Johnny in the choice legislation, the model for abolishing representative government (where students, teachers, and schools must comply to federal accountability when the federal money follows the child in an IEP, individualized education plans or career pathway), we have set up the failure of public and private schools and opened the door for unelected charter school take-over. Government will now have COMPLETE control over molding the personality and values of every child in the United States and parents will have no authority to change the system. Chilling. Not a future for our Republic as we know it.
ACTION- These are the Weaknesses in the System
The Common Core Standards are not federal law. This is the weakest link. Stop Common Core in your state and the federal government will not have the legal authority to access your child for tracking an IEP, or an individual career workforce plan and funding, identified for your child.
By stopping the combination of HR 5 and SB 1094, the federal government cannot fund the individual student without Common Core which is linked to choice at any private, public or charter school. This legislation will diminish representative government and feed the charter school socialist take-over of education.
States Rights– Title I funding 'following the child" bypasses the state legislature.
Local Control– Common Core Standards control the workforce curriculum bypassing local school boards and teachers in the classroom. Choice diminishes control over local taxing authority when funding goes directly to the student.
(See these other articles for documentation, 'Obama's Dream Come True-Nationalizing Education,' 'States Under Republican Leadership Fall for Obama's Carrot,' 'Common Core Molds Cookie Cutter Kids In Obama's "Race To The Top" Schools' by this author)
H.R. 5 -Power, Control, Funding, and Enforcement Aligned to Common Core Standards, Identifies the Student, Nationalizing Education
Obama's Dream Come True-Nationalizing Education
Obamacare was first to mandate to the individual. Now, education! Is this really what the American people want? Nationalizing education? HR 5, the re-authorization of ESEA, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, passed the House without a whimper. Two remarkable turns of events: first, on July 19, 2013, the Republican held House of Representatives gives Obama the socialist agenda that he dreams of-federalizing all of education and contributing to the loss of representative government. Second, the Common Core State Standards being passed in every state closed that loop. If this legislation passes this fall in combination with SB 1094, the federal government will be able to dictate what is taught in the classroom by fiat.
Local and state control will erode when federal funds go directly to the individual student bypassing all local & state authority. The individual student is identified, monitored, and targeted for intervention with the Common Core Standards. Common Core + HR 5 + SB 1094 =federal control of ALL education-private schools included with the Choice Amendments attached in HR 5. When HR 5 is combined to SB 1094, the companion bill in the Senate that was voted out of committee, the compromise will be disastrous for the Republic destroying public education, private education, and how local government functions.
Let's explain how the Common Core Standards identifies 'Johnny' in the classroom for the federal government. But, keep in mind, the Common Core Standard's key component is standardization in all 50 states.
The standards are copyrighted by the National Governors Association, NGA Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO.) The copyright ensures that the standards will be the same throughout the nation, creating a de-facto national curriculum. The standards also carry a public license which waives the copyright notice for State Departments of Education to use the standards. Two conditions apply. First, the use of the standards must be "in support" of the standards and the waiver only applies if the state has adopted the standards "in whole." This use of a copyright for public policy document is unprecedented in U.S. political history. The effect of the copyright and public license is standardization across the United States; the standards cannot be changed or modified, creating in effect, a national curriculum.
Overview of the Common Core Standards:
In 2009 the National Governors Association hired David Coleman and Student Achievement to write curriculum standards in literacy and mathematics. Announced on June 1, 2009, the standards were supposedly designed to be "relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills for success in college and careers to compete in a global economy." What is missing here is that a standards based system totally changes how we educate students in the United States. This is the same outcome based education debate that was feverishly fought in the 90's. Parents moved the clock back then on compliance, but not the continual research funded by the federal government, non-profits, corporations, and business. Obama also unlocked FERPA, Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, opening the research on individual students to meet the Common Core Standards. This is a defunct, sorry, recurring, failed education model being duplicated again, and again, and again.
Older names for Common Core Standards are: OBE, Outcome Based Education, Competency Based Education, Performance Based Education, Mastery Learning Model, and Student Centered Learning. The key to this model deals with the individual meeting learning outcomes or standards. This model is an un-natural process and does not identify individual differences in people. The focus is removed from a teacher teaching the curriculum with curriculum objectives to a group of students with varying intellectual differences. The Common Core Standards transforms education with each student with varying intellectual differences meeting the same specific controlled outcomes. Traditional education is turned upside down. This system removes the Carnegie Unit (ABCD or failure). Students no longer go to school 180 days or seat time, now there is no time limit for meeting standards. There are no more grade delineations like freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. And, most important, there is a transformation away from teaching content toward teaching 'standards only' driven by constant assessments and testing.
Think about that. Everyone will meet the SAME standard. Hello, America! Everyone is not the same. This is a socialistic-communistic system….equitable education. This system does not identify differences in individuals. Those students who move faster through the standards, will be the 20% selected for higher education, the global children selected for Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate, (Franken Amendment) but with the right attitudes. The other 80% will be trained for work. And yes, attitudes and values are part of the standards and part of the workforce skills for jobs aligned to the SCANS, Secretaries Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills. Values and attitudes are a part of the College and Career Ready Standards. Senate Bill 1094 blatantly includes "across domain" testing for the social and emotional development of students. Parents be prepared for the psychoanalyzing of your student.
The Remarkable Carrot and Stick Routine
Forty-five of the fifty states in the United States are members of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. States were given an incentive to adopt the Common Core Standards through the competitive federal Race to the Top grants to the tune of $4.35 billion from the Recovery Act. President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced Race to the Top competitive grants on July 24, 2009, as the carrot. To be eligible, states had to adopt "internationally benchmarked standards and assessments that prepare students for success in college and the work place." This meant that in order for a state to be eligible for these grants, the states had to adopt the Common Core State Standards or something similar. The rush to accept federal dollars provided a major push for states to adopt the standards. The Common Core Standards are funded by the governors and state school chiefs, with grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and others. States are planning to implement this initiative by 2015 by basing at least 85% of their state curricula on the Standards. Last year Obama also provided the states with Flexibility Waivers for No Child Left Behind. With this funding coup, states would have to also entertain College and Career Ready Standards, workforce skills in the affective domain, moving away from an academic curriculum toward a standards based system.
With the implementation of new standards, states are also required to adopt new assessments. The two consortiums surfaced with two different approaches to test the standards. 26 states formed the PARCC RttT Assessment Consortium, (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, Race to the Top.) The approach focuses on computer-based 'through-course assessments' in each grade combined with streamlined end of year tests, including performance tasks. The second consortium, the SMARTER Balanced Consortium, consists of 31 states for adaptive online exams.The decision to use which assessment is determined by state education agencies.
Work is in the planning stage to create a common, universal assessment system based on the common core state standards. Of course. If you have a national curriculum, you must have a national test. This unprecedented move changes the Standardized Testing most students are currently taking, because standardized testing measures content and does not measure attitudes. The "Universal Assessment System" is assuredly NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress and has always been the prototype for all state assessments that experimented with testing in the affective domain.
The clever plan to standardize the standards was actually passed by individual states or state boards of education. This removed the legal violation of the federal government directing and supervising curriculum which is against federal law. In summary, once your state accepts the Common Core Standards, power is removed from your neighborhood school and the teacher in the classroom. Common Core removes the old system based on content and replaces it with individual Common Core Standards that each individual student must meet and every individual teacher must teach. The Common Core lowers the bar of academics with a "dumbing down" approach in order for all children to meet them. Feedback loop control is initiated to force compliance on the school, the teacher, the student with data tracking creating a Total Quality Managed system. Individual educations plans, career pathways, small letter iep's, whatever you want to call forcing the individual student to comply to ONLY the Common Core, will be developed for EACH and every student creating a system of interventions if the student does NOT meet each standard through federal Special Ed funds, IDEA. HR 5 and SB1094 refer to the interventions as "Specialized Student Support."
HR 5, the Dollar and the Force Behind the Common Core. SB 1094 Out of Committee
The legislation passed by the Republican held House of Representatives sold our country out with this piece of legislation. The funding, Title I, "follows the child." What does this mean? This means that the money will fund each student wherever they want to go to school. This funding bypasses the state government and the local district. Interesting enough, the amendments attached by key Republican Congressmen, and a few other Democrats, have an assortment of issues that contribute to ensuring that representative government is erased.
Eric Cantor, (VA) R, and Rob Bishop (UT) R, allows Title I funds to follow the student to other public or charters schools upon the state opting to allow it. Rob Bishop also makes Title I portable to public ( including charter) schools and private schools. Matt Salmon, (AZ) R, provides States with the flexibility to allocate Title I grant funds in a manner that follows the child. States may allocate these funds based on the number of eligible children enrolled in the public and private schools served. John Tierney (MA) D, ensures a state's accountability system is applied to charter schools in the same manner as to other public schools. Jeff Duncan (SC) R, states would be able to direct block grant funding to any education purpose under state law.
In Summary: Creating Choice, Diminishing Public Schools, Grooming Charter Schools.
Under the House Bill, HR 5, a student is "given" Title I federal dollars to go to the school of their choice. Which school will they go to? The public school across the district? across the state? to a private school? Catholic school? homeschool? across state lines? Your tax money is traveling everywhere blurring tax bases. What will this do to your local school district? What will this do to a locally elected school board who will no longer have control over the tax base with students moving everywhere? The funds must be divided to each student in an equitable way.
Under the Senate Bill, SB 1094, funding establishes or expands inter- or intra-district public school choice programs that follow the child starting at birth to age 21, mandates workforce skills, and testing across ALL domains, attitudes and values included. It also establishes a NATIONAL SCHOOL BOARD. (This bill does not extend the choice funds to private schools, Senators Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Paul Rand (R-Ky.) amendment to allow Title I dollars to follow a student to any school, public or private, was defeated.) The meshing of the two bills gives us the entire agenda. The writing is on the wall.
Eventually, there will no longer be "better" schools, only equal schools. It is only fair, there shouldn't be wealthy school districts and poor school districts. Right? This ensures that your local school district will struggle. If a local district survives, they must be in-tune and in compliance with the common core agenda with perhaps minor functions like hiring, firing, maintenance of buildings, and managing federal accountability guidelines. Many states have already gone to court over equitable school finance and alternatives to property taxes. The trend is a regional tax base, pooling tax money, and this legislation lays the groundwork to do just that. Schools will close because of less funding to operate, and so called "academic bankruptcy" for not meeting standards. This also sets the stage for charter school take over, which is a public school without an elected board. Local and state representative government will continue to be gradually diminished. Follow the money.
Sending Federal 'Choice Children' to Private Schools
Will a private school be forced to accept a choice student? Will this choice money force private schools into " equal opportunity" and "an equitable resource implementation plan" for the choice students enrolled? Will choice students force the national curriculum and national testing on the private schools? Yes, Yes, and Yes. Particularly if your state passed the Common Core Standards.
Charter schools will be the norm, the future for all public schools. Charter schools are the model for taxation without representation. Specialized Student Support, Continuous Improvement, Teacher Evaluations, and Data Tracking Oversight with testing, testing, testing for accountability are all packed into HR 5 along with the choice amendments. Will the Democrat Senate pass this legislation this fall? Combined with SB 1094 introduced by Senator Harkin, which is the Democrat version of HR 5, we can count on it. We will have federalized all of education in the United States of America-Obama's Dream.
Stop the Common Core Standards.
Stop HR 5.
Stop SB 1094.
Historical Documentation: Charlotte Iserbyt,
the deliberate dumbing down of america
Soviets in the Classroom
See Obama's, Race to the Top Agenda' – States Under Republican Leadership Fall For the Carrot: Children Sold-Out for a Profit, by this author for documentation. Obama's Race to the Top Agenda
HR 5 legislation HR 5
SB 1094 legislation out of Committee: Senate Bill 1094
Franken Amendment- Advanced Placement/International Baccalaureate: The Chosen 20%:
Accelerated Learning Act
West Virginia Molds Cookie Cutter Kids In Their Incubator Lab: Codes Common Core Standards for Obama's 'Race to the Top' Schools
When traveling west from Pennsylvania on Interstate 70 toward West Virginia, you see the bold sign on the border: Wild, Wonderful West Virginia. West Virginia is a 'Race to the Top' model state with an international agenda for our nation's schools. Perhaps you will wonder why a state like West Virginia is being used as a guinea pig model for our nation's children? America is not watching.
West Virginia had been selected through the CCSSO, Council Chief State School Officers, as a Next Generation School called Innovation Lab Network. There were 6 other states selected for this Race to the Top agenda, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Maine, New York, Ohio, & New Hampshire was added. Steven L. Paine, former State Superintendent of Schools, led West Virginia down the international path of 21st Century Learning Outcomes. The state created policies that set up an agenda that correlated those outcomes into strategies & learning objectives that would be coded for individual data retrieval in the Common Core longitudinal data collection. Dr. Paine was President of the CCSSO, member of the Governing Board of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, NAEP, the national test, Vice President Business Operations of CTB/McGraw Hill, a testing company, & now president of Partnership for 21st Century Skills, P21. He is now pushing the integration of 21st Century Skills in federal legislation, HR 347. (Link this information to the legislation currently passed by the Republican House of Representatives, HR 5.) However, workforce skills standards are already being swept in under the door mandated through federal ESEA Flexibility Waivers. HR 347 would make workforce standards law. The CCSSO, OECD, the international Organization for Economic Co-Operation & Development, & the Stupski Foundation funded the Innovation Lab Network in which West Virginia was a model state in Obama's 'Race to the Top' schools.
Led by Paine, West Virginia is deeply engaged in systemically transforming the public school system with the goal of providing all West Virginia children with the skills for global citizenship. This agenda redesigns what the reformers are calling the old 'Industrial Age' style of schooling & ridicules the traditional education system that is based on intellectual knowledge & academic content, the Carnegie Unit (ABCD or failure), going to school for 180 days or seat time & grade separations ( freshman, sophomore, junior, senior). Our traditional system of teaching, identifies, challenges, & rewards intellectual excellence & hard work. The transformational, standards based system, where there is no competition, eliminates all this & is a radical change from schooling as we know it. A standards-based system is focused on the individual meeting specific standards that are being replicated across the country & duplicated from state to state in the Common Core State Standards. This type of education demands an IEP, individual education plan or career pathway that is developed to meet the standards. (See "Republican Leadership Falls for Obama's Carrot" by this author.) The fallacy in a standards based system is that there is no identification of individual differences or IQ. This un-natural system eliminates the concept of individual accomplishments & freedom to choose your future, where the direction is a controlled, standardized authority where the government chooses for you in a caste-like agenda. The Common Core Standards eventually lead to a national curriculum controlled through testing, retesting, & standardization called 'feedback loop control' for continual monitoring & the eventual federal take-over of education. A state agreeing to the Common Core Standards is the first step, like getting the camel's nose under the tent.
West Virginia's Global21 program is focused on the development of international curriculum standards, an assessment that measures & tests those standards, research-based instructional practices & curriculum taught to meet the standards, a parallel accountability system that aligns teacher performance with school performance based on the standards, development of a 21st century mastery teacher continuum; emphasis on pre-K programs to identify interventions early on, and integration of technology tools and skills in every classroom…all centered around meeting standards that government controls.
There are currently 46 states that have adopted the Common Core Standards for Obama's 'Race to the Top' schools mostly because of the Elementary & Secondary Education Act, Title I, ESEA Flexibility Waivers given to states applying for flexibility in the 'No Child Left Behind' legislation under the Bush administration. The waivers require explicitly that an accountability system of assessments along with College & Career Ready standards must be devised. Another incubator state, Kentucky, has also transformed their focus of education toward the international standards. Dr. Terry Holliday, Kentucky Commissioner of Education is quoted on Oct. 29, 2010,…" [that] we will change from school- to the people development business." In December 2010, Holliday was named to the board of directors for the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) for 2010-11. In September 2011, Holliday was appointed to serve a four-year term on the National Assessment Governing Board. These key change agents have mastered the agenda for moving entire states to an international agenda of molding students for global citizenship & accepting Common Core Standards.
West Virginia Department of Education focuses on three goals for all children & blatantly professes the fact that attitudes, values,& dispositions are a focus of their curriculum:
Goal 1: To meet or exceed state, national and international curriculum standards that incorporate acquisition of 21st century skills.
Goal 2: To develop the personal skills and dispositions of wellness, responsibility, cultural awareness, self-direction, ethical character and good citizenship.
Goal 3: To graduate from high school prepared for post-secondary education and career success through personalized pathways and guidance.
What are Common Core Standards & 21st Century Skills? These standards, taken from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills or P21 under Life & Career Skills, are incorporated into West Virginia standards. Notice in the graph above, the personal & workplace productivity skills. Many are in the affective domain, or in the area of attitudes, values, beliefs, & dispositions. No longer is school focused on academics. The agenda to educate the child is now referred to as the " learning genome" – evaluating personality & teaching the whole child. That means the way a child thinks or what they believe, what they feel or their values & attitudes, & what they can do or their behavior or how they act. It's not about academics, it's about control & molding the child to the state desired minimum standard. This is the new school & these are the steps that are being taken.
West Virginia Codes Unique Data Sets for the Common Core Standards: Each standard and each objective will have a Unique Electronic Number (UEN) that will always remain the same.
The next several paragraphs teaches how to code standards & the objectives so that the Common Core Standards can be duplicated for computer retrieval. This also sets the stage for individual students to be monitored toward meeting those standards. A standards-based curriculum includes learning standards and instructional objectives. The learning standards are the broad descriptions of what all students must know and be able to do at the conclusion of the instructional sequence. The objectives are specific descriptors of knowledge, skills and attitudes that the student must master to attain the standard. The instructional objectives guide curriculum planning and provide a basis for determining specific assessments, instructional strategies and resources validated to meet the standards. Objectives build across grade levels as students advance attaining the appropriate knowledge, skills & attitudes. This is known as scaffolding where all activities are related & controlled toward meeting the standards.
Understanding the Numbering of Standards & the Codes for Computer Retrieval are explained below:
The number for each content standard is composed of four parts, each part separated by a period: the content area codes are LS for Learning Skills and TT for Technology Tools, the letter S, for Standard, the program level, and the standard number
Illustration: 21C.S.PK-2.1 ( 21st Century Standard, PreK thru grade 2, content standard #1.)
Numbering of Objectives: The number of each objective is composed of five parts, each part separated by a period: content area code (LS for Learning Skills; TT for Technology Tools),the letter O is for Objective, the program level, the number of the content standard addressed, and the objective number. Illustration: 21C.O.3-4.1.TT2 (21 Century Objective, grades 3-4, addresses standard #1 in Technology Tools, and is the second objective listed under that standard.)
Unique Electronic Numbers (or UENs) are numbers that help to electronically identify, categorize and link specific bits of information. Each objective will have a Unique Electronic Number (UEN) that will always remain the same. The only additional set of numbers that will be added to each code to formulate its UEN will be a prefix that indicates the year and month. These codes will follow individual student attainment of the Common Core Standards in a longitudinal data base Pre-k through career.
UENs (Unique Electronic Numbers) are unique numbers that facilitate implementation of Standards into Electronic formats such as Databases and XML Files. The WV Department of Education encourages everyone to use the WV Content Standards in any kind of electronic distribution, alignment, or software development to use the UENs so that all efforts can be cross- referenced and there is consistency across initiatives. The key to the transformation is standardization. The standards, the coding, the teaching, the curriculum, the testing, all must conform to the blueprint.
This is the blueprint. So. What will be taught? Let's fill in the blanks & look at the actual standards:
West Virginia Openly Measures & Molds Student Attitudes: Discussing Affective Issues in Common Core & College & Career Ready Standards
Under the federal Elementary Secondary Education Act, ( ESEA) Flexibly Waiver under Title I, a state applying for the grant must meet certain guidelines. A state must also incorporate college & career ready standards & assessments into their state plan that would align to Common Core Standards.
West Virginia blatantly states what those standards will be. The standard #3, Personal & Workplace Skills in the graph below, proves that students will be forced to change their beliefs & attitudes. The 3rd standard is: "The student will exhibit leadership, ethical behavior, respect for others, accept responsibility for personal actions considering the impact on others, take the initiative to plan & execute tasks, & interact productively as a member of the group."
Notice in the graph under Learning Skill Objective #1, that the student is being pressured to "go along with the group, even under stress." The student must work collaboratively. They must "willingly align their personal beliefs & goals to the goals of others," forcing the student to change through cognitive conflict "under stress" as a positive goal. The standard concludes that the student "derives personal satisfaction from achieving group goals." This objective creates artificial stress on the student. What if the standard conflicts with what the student believes or what the student has been taught at home? What is the roll & responsibility of a teacher to facilitate changing of these beliefs & attitudes? Does this effect the student's personality? Are clinical psychologists involved or are school counselors & teachers acting as clinical psychologists?
"Moral issues often involve the examination of authority roles. Classroom discussions of what is right & fair inevitably turn to a questioning of authority relationships in class, school, and family. This is so because our beliefs about authority figures are a vital part of our moral judgment." ( Promoting Moral Growth from Piaget to Kohlberg," Hersh, Paolitto, Reimer.) What will happen to the rugged individualist? What will happen to the creative child? This example is the most chilling outcome that we could possibly put children through. This is people molding, not teaching & learning. What's happens to a students' psyche when there will be continual stress/conflict induced activities? Why are we moving to this type of teaching at school? Is enough stress placed on the child to commit suicide? To commit crimes? Will this technique cause a change in personality? Depression? Are there studies to conclude that these techniques are NOT harmful? What is the end result of standards that force ALL students to be non-thinking, non-feeling programmed robots that respond only to the group & to specific stimuli? Why MUST these standards & techniques be used in American schools allowing experimentation on our children & why is it so important? Perhaps, American children must think differently & prepare for something their parents are NOT preparing them for. Welcome to the 21st Century Skills for global citizenship.
Cookie Cutter Common Core Kids
News Out of New York: Experts, Parents, Lawmakers Blast Database Providing Personal Student Information To Vendors March 14, 2013
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) –" A new national database that compiles personal student information for educational companies that contract with public schools is being blasted by privacy experts.
"In turn, inBloom reportedly plans to put this private information on a data cloud and share it with for-profit vendors. The information will include personally identifiable information, including student names, test scores, grades, home addresses, email addresses, linked to grades, test scores, disciplinary and arrest records, special education status, race, economic status and health conditions, according to Class Size Matters, a non-profit organization that advocates for class size reduction in NYC's public schools."
What allowed this incident to happen? What exactly is in the records that were released? What authority was given to the schools or the state or federal departments of education to release this information to big business? This is only the beginning.
The Rape of Your Personal Records. It's more than, 'What grade did you get in Algebra?' Or 'Government tapping personal phone records & emails.' It's All about You.
Government has been listening to your conversations & scanning your emails. But, do they know how you think? Does the government know your predispositions of how you will act in the future or your thoughts? Let's take a step by step process so you can easily understand what is at stake & how your neighborhood school is involved in collecting data about your family. Let's define psychological.
psychology noun (Concise Encyclopedia)
"Scientific discipline that studies mental processes and behaviour in humans and other animals. Literally meaning "the study of the mind," psychology focuses on both individual and group behaviour. Clinical psychology is concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. Other specialized fields of psychology include child psychology, educational psychology, sports psychology, social psychology, and comparative psychology. The issues studied by psychologists cover a wide spectrum, including learning, cognition, intelligence, motivation, emotion, perception, personality, and the extent to which individual differences are shaped by genetics or environment. The methods used in psychological research include observation, interviews, psychological testing, laboratory experimentation, and statistical analysis."
So, if I told you the schools are doing psychological work-ups on children to change their personality & study their genetic make-up to change how they think or act, would you be upset? Would you be upset if I told you about a data base that collects this information & gives it to big business? Lets talk more about the process.
FERPA, Family Education Rights & Privacy Act, was unlocked & allows data to be gathered on your children & dispersed for research. The floodgates open up a trove of priceless personal data of not only what your child thinks, but what you as a parent think, too. Once psychological mapping is done of what your child thinks, the record will show what their parents taught them to think & believe. Psychological data is being collected in school records. Obama authorizes FERPA to Disclose & Distribute Personally Identifiable Information on Families & Students Without Congressional Authority. FERPA was amended & new regulations went into effect January 3, 2012, Family Education Rights & Privacy Act 34 CFR Part 99. These new regulations were written & put in place allowing access to all Personally Identifiable Information, PII, which means all records on students & families can be accessed by any organization to do research, experimentation & evaluations without your permission. But why? Why must every child be accessed in America & kwhy is this dangerous?
"Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It's up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well – by creating the international child of the future." Dr. Chester M. Pierce, Psychiatrist, address to the Childhood International Education Seminar, 1973
Using Clintons take on, 'Its the economy , stupid!' My comment is, "It's about Mental Health, Stupid! "
The 'Race to the Top' models explicitly state that "authentic affective engagement" must be used for interpersonal & higher order thinking skills to be developed. What does this mean? Affective means attitudes & values. Interpersonal means your child's personality & how he/she reacts to the world around them. Higher order thinking skills are value judgments, opinions, or decision making. This is the new term coined for brainwashing. Wipe the slate clean from what you have been taught by your parents, your grandparents, your minister, your elected officials. Learn new ways of thinking about your country, your God, your family. Your child is being primed as a global citizen that moves & thinks like a drone, together & in cooperation with each other.
So, what type of information is in those records? 'Race To the Top' programs & all software contractors & testing contractors can now easily move forward to create individualized education modules, testing, & curriculum referred to as "learning genomes." Remember, the Common Core-College & Career Ready Standards are being approved in over 46 states. Federal funding, ESEA, Title I flexibility waivers, are being approved in almost all of the states bypassing No Child Left Behind. With federal money comes federal accountability.
The Next Generation Learning Innovation Labs contracted through CCSSO (Chief State School Officers) & the Stupski Foundation (which ceased operations in July 2012) were guinea pig models for these individualized programs where the money will eventually follow the child with the proposed changes in the federal Reauthorization of ESEA, Elementary & Secondary Education Act, & IDEA, (Special Ed), Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, regulations. The agenda will move forward by-passing local & state representative government when federal money directly goes to the child.
Why is this concept important? Because, in order to move toward global citizenship, the government must be able to access the individual. FERPA had to be expanded to allow access to individual records & to be able to start at a young age. What better place to start than in school & pre-school. Compulsory attendance makes it so. This is a "sea of change." This is your country that is being taken over by rogue socialists who want to control people & this country entirely.
Of course we have seen this before in OBE & other named agendas. This time it is different. Never has the federal government been allowed to access the individual. Obamacare made this possible, thank you, Justice Roberts. Spoon feed the masses a little at a time. Research & scheme for years. Redefine terms. Start with a pilot, a model in a few states. Model states in the Stupski experiments were Kentucky, Maine, New York, Ohio, West Virginia, Wisconsin, & New Hampshire. The Obama model eliminates the Carnegie Unit, (ABCD& failure); eliminate grade bands, like sophomore, junior, senior, etc; & expand the time it takes to meet outcomes, there is no time limit. The new parameters expand the grouping from P-20…pre-natal to 20 years old. Preparations are being planned for college students also with a new degree program that older students must go through to graduate called the Degree Qualification Profile. Each child will have an individualized education plan to meet outcomes with pre-planned curriculum in individualized modules. This can only be done with technology to monitor progress & the computer for data trafficking. The new concept is called, "the world to one." The Obama administration is covering all bases.
To prepare for the global workforce, we must first assess the student through testing, now called assessment. The definition of assessment is the value or worth of something or someone. Hence you have the definition of 'human capital," the worth of a person. The idea of the learning genome is primarily taking each child, their learning style, biographical data, medical records, & all student information for knowledge integration, to plan a precise & customized IEP, individualized student educational plan with pre & post testing & an assessment data library that will be pre-planned. Pre-planned means that the government has established what type of citizen is needed for global citizenship. No freedom loving Americans allowed. Performance assessments will be used & will be imbedded in the curriculum. This customized model ensures compliance to Common Core-College & Career Ready Standards. The technique used is mastery learning or Skinner's operant conditioning modules to meet dumbed down world-class knowledge & drone skills for a global workforce. Mastery Learning uses operant conditioning which produces functional literates, much like Pavlov's salivating dogs, & Skinner's high achieving pigeons, which matches the child to their job potential or worth of creating monetary value for government. The implied intent is the "world to one" or each worker bee will be given a precise plan as his or her worth in the new global workforce.
How will children be remediated? In West Virginia, a Race to the Top model, the use of IDEA (Special Ed) funds allow Support For Personalized Learning or SPL. "This includes Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS). Improving student academic and behavior outcomes is about ensuring all students have access to the most effective and accurately implemented instructional and behavioral practices and interventions possible. PBIS provides an operational framework for achieving these outcomes. More importantly, PBIS is not a curriculum, intervention, or practice, but is a decision-making framework that guides selection, integration and implementation of the best evidence-based academic and behavioral practices for improving important academic and behavior outcomes for all students." West Virginia is on the path to "cookie cutter kids."
With the loosening of data sharing possibilities, our children's lives will be totally exposed, our privacy will be stripped, & the access to our children in the classrooms to be forced to conform to extreme leftist agendas through technology, will be "fait accompli." It will be very difficult for a parent to grasp what is being taught in the classroom & there are no protections to shield your child from the aggressive model to change their attitudes & behavior toward this global communion.
The massive student & family privacy risks and the agency's lack of legal authority to make changes to the privacy law without explicit Congressional intent has broad & damaging implications for the individual. Personal information now can be shared with any organization with a written agreement in any educational program from birth thru adult. In other words, Obama had the regulations amended & opened the flood-gates of data sharing on our children & our families. There are no federal protections for you & your family whatsoever.