Posted on 10/18/2013 4:36:33 AM PDT by Kaslin
As an outspoken critic of the federal academic standards scheme known as Common Core, I'd like to offer some friendly advice to opponents. Stop insulting. Stop digging. Stop projecting. Start listening.
Central planners in Washington have been caught off-guard by the grassroots revolt against the national standards/testing/curriculum juggernaut. Real input from the hoi polloi was never a part of the grand implementation process. So when parents and educators in dozens of states started challenging the privacy intrusions posed by and the constitutionality, cost, quality and validity of Common Core, its architects went on the attack.
And now, the education control freaks are freaking out.
Former GOP Florida Gov. Jeb Bush accused moms and dads who've vigilantly fought dumbed-down curricula firsthand of foisting "mediocrity" on their own kids.
Bush, Mike Huckabee, Chamber of Commerce types and Gates Foundation promoters routinely have insulted Glenn Beck and his listeners as conspiracy-mongers for raising red flags about Common Core's data-mining agenda.
A Fordham Institute "expert" arrogantly suggested that actively involved parents like me were somehow confused about which materials have been "aligned" to Common Core, even though we're the ones sitting down with our kids to help with incomprehensible homework and error-riddled texts every night in our own homes.
Heavy-handed school-board members and state educrats are taking cues from these elitist leaders. When they're not mocking dissenters, they're stifling them. Maryland parent Robert Small was threatened with arrest and falsely accused of assaulting a police officer because he dared to challenge a Common Core Kabuki forum.
In North Carolina, a parent writes that her principal refused to meet with a group of moms and dads concerned with dumbed-down Common Core math lessons. Moreover, the parent told the Truth About Education blog, the principal issued an effective gag order when she "outright told me to stop communicating with other parents about the Common Core because I was generating 'unrest.'"
In Colorado, parent Natalie Adams was slapped with a no-trespass order by Jefferson County officials last week after challenging her district's new boondoggle expenditures on Common Core-tied technology marketed by inBloom (a nonprofit school data-sharing conglomerate funded by the Gates and Carnegie Foundations, with architecture built by Wireless/Amplify, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation).
In a classic case of psychological projection, New York Education Commissioner John King sneered at parents and teachers who attended his Common Core dog-and-pony show as "special interests." After droning on uninterrupted for an hour and a half, King finally allowed two-minute statements from the audience. Parents balked at their kids being used as "guinea pigs" for untested teaching methods; educators challenged Common Core's assessment-obsessed, one-size-fits-all approach. King petulantly cut off testimony only 20 minutes into the feedback session to filibuster and grandstand -- and then proceeded to cancel future forums.
King dug his hole further by accusing parents of being "manipulated." But Leonie Haimson, a New York City public school parent, pointed out: "So far six out of nine states have pulled out of inBloom or put their plans on hold because of protests from privacy experts and parents in Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Delaware and Massachusetts."
"Commissioner King's claim is not only insulting to parents; it reveals how out of touch he is," Haimson wrote this week in an assessment that sums up the problem with countless Common Core mouthpieces. "He seems unable to comprehend how parents' desire to protect their children's privacy is rational and to have the right to decide with whom their children's most sensitive information, including their names, addresses, test scores, disabilities and disciplinary records, is being shared is completely justified."
In my home state of Colorado, dissent from both conservative and liberal parents forced Jefferson County to allow individual "opt-outs" from the inBloom data-mining machine. The Gates Foundation responded by pouring $5 million into the district for "innovative professional development systems to create personalized learning systems for teachers." How do you spell special interest payoff?
Not only do these education emperors have no clothes. They have tissue-paper thin skin. Their arrogant, contemptuous and vengeful treatment of dissenting parents and teachers gets a world-class "F." Listen up:
We parents of school-age children are all Robert Smalls and Natalie Adamses and Leonie Haimsons. We, not the Obamas or the Bushes or the Gateses or educrats in Washington, are our children's primary educational providers. Control over our children begins and ends with us.
It is not easy to stand up and challenge sovereignty-undermining, curriculum-usurping, privacy-sabotaging education orthodoxy, especially when it is plied with a toxic alliance of both big-government and big-business interests.
But if we don't do it, who will?
Bttt
The stupidity of Common Core is staggering. Looking at Math (my personal interest), they didn’t compare 50 states and tens of thousands of school districts to find the most successful curriculum. Instead, they invented something completely new and untested. Regardless of the motives I imagine for those pushing Common Core, this makes no sense.
Common Core is no different than looking at an elephant, then telling them to climb a tree, when he can’t then telling him he is stupid.
Nothing but more UN propaganda bullshi# disguised as critical thinking.
Unless one’s principles are mere adornment, it is time to fight or flee, and clearly no one is inclined to fight. Not even with a school board.
You said it.
for later
In your face parents!....Like Hitler said to them..."we have the children 6 days a week...who are you?"
In Colorado, Vote NO on Amendment 66, which is an Annual $1 Billion Tax increase.
They claim it’s for the classroom, but there is NOTHING in the bill that requires that.
Also, Vote for the Conservative Douglas County School Board Candidates to continue our amazing success!
Geddes, Reynolds, Benevento, and Silverthorn.
“Stop insulting. Stop digging. Stop projecting.”
When you find something that works, you keep using it.
It’s worse than “stupidity” or “nonsense motives”, IMO, it’s educational malpractice of the worst kind. What you cited as new and untested, absolutely flies in the face of accepted methods of process implementation. If this method were proposed in a masters degree thesis, the advisor/committee would question how the student ever was admitted to a graduate-level program. The bullying of parents by educrats is the primary evidence of the ultimate bankruptcy of the proposal.
Repeat after me: private school or home school, private school or home school...ad naseum
“But if we don’t do it, who will?”
Home School - the problem is always much bigger than what a handful of parents can deal with...
They made it this way so whatever opposition comes up - it can be swiftly dealt with. That’s the new politics of the US.
The only way to beat it - is not to play the game. Yes, that means hardships on families pulling their kids out of the socialist school system - or keep them in there and supplement the education with meaningful Christian Conservative assignments during the weekend to counter and bulk up what they are not getting in the public school system.
Same goes for college - there are a number of conservative online colleges out there - why send them them away - when the Internet online college offer better courses that the STUDENT is responsible for - there’s alot of writing and critical thinking that goes into it!
There are ways to counter this - but trying to take down a castle wall with a plastic spoon is not one of them...let the castle remain empty by leaving it!
Home School - the problem is always much bigger than what a handful of parents can deal with...
*************
Homeschool won’t work for long - see video below. The fact that ACT and SAT tests are going to be aligned with common core is the main issue. When educrats see the results of homeschoolers on these tests, homeschooling will be forbidden.
Around 54 min – 58 min they talk about how homeschoolers will be affected.
One hour 9 minutes
Common Core: Dangers And Threats To American Liberty And Education
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epo2oWoL7ZE
[Video] Common Core: Dangers And Threats To American Liberty And Education
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3079388/posts
Who is paying for all the “conservative” common core radio ads? Why are we getting carpet bombed with them in FL now? It’s like the amnesty PR campaign all over again. Disgusting.
Homeschooling has been very good to us.
Stay tuned!
We must always be vigilant....I dropped the ball, thinking no way would it be in this school.
Sidwell Friends doesn’t use CommieCore. What will Obama’s kids do when they take the SAT?
I found out our Catholic school also has common core. Ugh! This is a huge opportunity for Catholic schools to dig their heels into traditional reading, writing and arithmetic and prove they are better!
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