Free Republic

A national effort to unify education standards across America and help American children compete more effectively with students in better-performing nations is actually a dumbing-down of America’s schools, takes away local control, handcuffs good teachers and opens the door for ideological manipulation of our kids. Common Core was developed in recent years as a means of establishing nationwide learning standards, and the vast majority of states signed on, even before the standards were spelled out. And critics of the plan say the emerging reality of Common Core is far different from what was promised.

Have you checked your kids' school assignments lately? You might be shocked if you do. Sixth-grade children in a history class in the Bryant School District in Arkansas (whose website brags that the district "has embraced" Common Core standards) were assigned a project to update the U.S. Bill of Rights because it is "outdated." They were instructed to "prioritize, revise, omit two and add two amendments." The written assignment is full of lies, such as "the government of the United States is currently revisiting the Bill of Rights"; that "They (presumably the government) have determined that it is outdated and...

Dr. Duke Pesta Testifies Against Common Core in Wisconsin - On Fire!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QJ3I_xF4MY On Wednesday, October 16, FreedomProject Education's Academic Director testified in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin against the implementation of Common Core. FreedomProject Educationhttp://www.fpeusa.org/ Common Core: A Scheme to Rewrite Education Common Core — new national education standards that the federal government is bribing and coercing states to adopt — will harm students, not benefit them. Orwellian Nightmare: Data-mining Your Kids Being implemented hand in hand with the new national curriculum standards being pushed on schools, called Common Core, is government surveillance of students.

n the early years of the 20th century, the students in Bullitt County, Kentucky, were asked to clear a test that many full-fledged adults would likely be hard-pressed to pass today. The Bullitt County Geneaological Society has a copy of this exam, reproduced below—a mix of math and science and reading and writing and questions on oddly specific factoids–preserved in their museum in the county courthouse. But just think for a moment: Did you know where Montenegro was when you were 12? Do you know now? (Hint: it’s just across the Adriatic Sea from Italy. You know where the Adriatic...

(Summary: In many ways, public schools seem deliberately organized to diminish intellect, not to enlarge it.) An acquaintance sent this note: “My sister tells of teaching math to college freshmen. The question was: If X plus 5 = 10, what is the value of X? It took her an entire week to get the kids to finally say ‘5.’ So the following Monday, just on a hunch, she gave them another problem: If Y plus 5 = 10, what is the value of Y? And no one could answer!” Remember, these students have been admitted to a community college. Presumably,...

Once a clear Common Core supporter, Scott is in a political bind. Tea party groups, which make up an important part of his base, want Florida to jettison the new standards and tests. But schools across the state are already teaching Common Core, and Republican leaders in the House and Senate are standing behind the benchmarks. The Common Core standards outline what is expected of students at each grade level but do not include suggestions for books or how teachers should plan their lessons. The benchmarks, created by the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers, have...

Author John J. Newman has some explaining to do. His textbook, United States History: Preparing for the Advanced Placement Examination, literally rewrites the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. On page 102 of Newman’s book (page 134 of the PDF version), the author cuts the Second Amendment in half and leaves out several key words.

It is our duty to stop stuff like this. Guyer High School (and obviously several others) are complicit in attempting to condition students to interpret the 2nd Amendment in a clearly opposite manner in which it was intended. The 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th are also misinterpreted as several commentators below pointed out. This textbook, currently being used by Guyer High School, is attempting to redefine the Second Amendment to impressionable young minds. Parents, you must speak up and demand action. Investigate your child's history book ASAP, and post more pictures in the comments below. Call your school and demand...

The acronyms for America’s New World Order education are mind-numbing – all the better to keep you from connecting who is connected to who/whom/which. First, I have found one source that connects Common Core Initiative Standards (CCIS) to “Connect All Schools,” and that is on the “Connect All Schools” website page titled One World Education (OWE). Second, our Department of Defense (DOD) has partnered with the Connect All Schools program. Connect All Schools is connected to Vartan Gregorian. Gregorian is connected to Barack Obama in numerous ways, including as a member of the White House Fellowship Commission. Gregorian was born...

The Common Core State Standards have been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia with the goal of better preparing the nation’s students for college or a job. Despite their widespread adoption, many parents don’t know what the standards are or whether their state has adopted them, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. The new standards establish benchmarks for reading and math, replacing education goals that varied widely from state to state. Although the federal government was not involved in creating them, it has encouraged the state-led project. Supporters say the standards will...

I have been teaching for over twenty years. Generally, I have been given either no curriculum or curriculum that was focused on skills, not specific texts. I would have to get those skills taught in whatever way I wanted to get there. Sometimes I was given more direction and that direction was generally pretty good including texts, key terms, supplemental stories, and suggested writing assignments. These directions were created at a school level by the teachers in the school. I helped write some myself. Mostly, I have had a lot of freedom in how I could achieve the learning goals....

I am considering a career change and think I would be a great teacher if i could survive the political arena. I am looking for comrades in arms. Are there any groups of conservative teachers that would be willing to organize to combine efforts to promote conservative thinking at your school? Would such a group survive?

As school begins in the coming weeks, parents of boys should ask themselves a question: Is my son really welcome? A flurry of incidents last spring suggests that the answer is no. In May, Christopher Marshall, age 7, was suspended from his Virginia school for picking up a pencil and using it to “shoot” a “bad guy” — his friend, who was also suspended. A few months earlier, Josh Welch, also 7, was sent home from his Maryland school for nibbling off the corners of a strawberry Pop-Tart to shape it into a gun. At about the same time, Colorado’s...

School had always been his safe harbor. Growing up in one of South Los Angeles' bleakest, most violent neighborhoods, he learned about the world by watching "Jeopardy" and willed himself to become a straight-A student. His teachers and his classmates at Jefferson High all rooted for the slight and hopeful African American teenager. He was named the prom king, the most likely to succeed, the senior class salutatorian. He was accepted to UC Berkeley, one of the nation's most renowned public universities. A semester later, Kashawn Campbell sat inside a cramped room on a dorm floor that Cal reserves for...

“Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” – Michel Foucault Once upon a time in America, parents breathed a sigh of relief when their kids went back to school after a summer’s hiatus, content in the knowledge that for a good portion of the day their kids would be gainfully occupied, out of harm’s way and out of trouble. Those were the good old days, before school shootings became a part of our national lexicon and schools, aiming for greater security, transformed themselves into quasi-prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols,...

In America, a good education is available everywhereThese days, it seems like everything is made into a political football. Perhaps the one thing we can agree upon is the importance of education for everyone. Currently in the United States, approximately 30 percent of the people who enter high school do not graduate. This was considerably less of a problem during the agricultural age or the industrial age, when all one needed to be successful financially was a strong back and a willingness to work. Now that we have advanced to the technological-information age, education has assumed paramount importance for success...

Learning, and thinking, are deeply social activities. This is not the traditional view (Rodin's iconic sculpture, "The Thinker," is conspicuously alone in his chin-on-fist musings), but it's the view that is emerging out of several decades of social science research. Our minds often work best in interaction with other people's minds, and there are particular kinds of relationships that are especially good at evoking our intelligence. One is the master-apprentice relationship, which I wrote about here. Another, of course, is the teacher-student relationship—but today I want to talk about the benefits of this relationship for the teacher. For thousands of...

One bizarre aspect of any discussion about public education is that everybody tiptoes around the real reason why the schools are mediocre. We spend billions of dollars. Millions of people work in this area. The whole country embraces public education. So why do we have low literacy rates, widespread ignorance among ordinary citizens about simple things, etc., etc.?? The people in charge can’t be trying to do a good job. Put another way, whatever it is these people mean by “education” is not what most parents want for their kids. John Dewey and everybody else in charge of public education...

Colleges around the country should be worried. The quality of online courses is catching up fast. Depending on whom you talk to, massively open online courses (MOOCs) will upend and democratize higher education, or are half-baked approximations of lectures that can never equal the classroom. Kevin Carey, the director of the Education Policy Program at the New America Foundation put it to the test, spending four months taking two MOOCs, from start to finish. One, a Coursera Introduction to Philosophy was everything critics dislike, he says. Too brief, and with none of the problem sets, essays, or tests that make...

LANSING — Teachers couldn't blame the weather or inability to get the day off from work as excuses for the underwhelming turnout for what was billed as a "huge grassroots rally" for traditional public schools in Lansing Wednesday. Notice of the rally was posted on Facebook and progressive blogs, and notices were sent to 8,000 teachers and public education supporters, according to one organizer. Before the rally, 751 people said on Facebook that they would attend, and a popular liberal blog said turnout would be "huge," but a headcount put the figure at about 500 people. The crowd barely filled...