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SANTA FE – On her third day as governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham announced that New Mexico will drop the oft-maligned PARCC exam after the current school year – if not sooner. In its place, a new state-specific assessment system will be created, Lujan Grisham said. Although it’s unclear exactly what the replacement will look like, the new Democratic governor said she’s confident it can be in place by August and will meet federal requirements. “I know that PARCC isn’t working,” Lujan Grisham said after announcing two executive orders during a news conference at the state Capitol. “We know that around...

As more states learn what Common Core involves, fewer of them want anything to do with it. “The number of states participating in the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) Common Core-aligned testing consortium has fallen from 26 plus Washington, DC in 2010 to just seven states and Washington, DC today, according to the Pioneer Institute,” Heather Kays reported in School Reform News. “Ohio abandoned PARCC on June 30, making it the latest state to back out of the consortium.” “Ohio officials decided in July to use the assessments created by the American Institutes for Research...

Ohio dropped the PARCC Common Core testing consortium Tuesday night after a series of complaints from educators and parents, including concerns from north central Ohio. Gov. John Kasich signed a compromise two-year budget which concurred with Ohio Senate and House leaders that the Math and English exams would end in Ohio. According to a report, Ohio spent $26 million in online and print testing last year. “The people of the state of Ohio seem to have spoken loudly that they don’t want the PARCC,” State Sen. Peggy Lehner told reporters.

Opposition to Common Core continues to spread well across party lines, no matter how much the educational establishment tires to minimize the blowback. “Illinois state officials have threatened to withhold funding from school districts that refuse to administer a new state exam aligned with Common Core State Standards,” the American School Board Journal reported in the current issue of the magazine. “The threat, issued in a letter earlier this year to school districts, followed a Chicago Public Schools announcement that it would not administer the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) exam.” “In explaining their decision,...

Last week, Jeb Bush was in New Hampshire, pressing on with his sordid campaign to delude conservatives into swallowing Common Core and massive, unfettered immigration policies. He has fashioned himself a champion of the American worker, even as he pompously pushes Gang of Eight amnesty as the “adult” plan in the room. And he has fashioned himself a champion of “school choice,” even as he zealously crusades for failed Fed Ed rackets and data-mining schemes masquerading as “higher standards.” The condescending Bush attitude is familiar to grass-roots activists and parents in Florida and across the country who have fought Club...

The superintendent of the Watchung Hills Regional High School District in New Jersey has confirmed that she sent an email to fellow superintendents Tuesday about her concern that education publishing giant Pearson is “monitoring” children’s social media accounts for possible leaks about the Common Core-aligned PARCC tests.

Students across the country are required to take an annual Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC test, which is aligned with Common Core standards. For students in New Mexico, scoring on PARCC exams determine 50 percent of their grade.Connor Guiney and Anna Bentham-Grey appeared on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” and admitted they were surprised by the size of the walkout at Highland High School in Albuquerque . . . “We thought maybe 100, or 150 would come out. But by the end of the day we had over 300 people and that was...

A New Mexico eighth-grader was suspended from school for letting her classmates know that they could opt out of the state’s new online standardized test. 12-year-old Adelina Silva printed out the forms from her own school’s website and was rewarded with a trip to the principal’s office. Adelina and her mother, Jacqueline Ellvinger, appeared on “Fox and Friends” this morning to explain what happened and why Adelina was punished. “I wanted the parents to know that they had the option to let the student either take the test or not,” Adelina said. …

ESSEX COUNTY — Facing a contingent of concerned parents, a growing number of school districts across the state are moving to create official opt-out policies for students who will not be taking the PARCC exam, a new state test that will be administered for the first time next month. The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers test, which is based on the Common Core education standards and is administered entirely on computers, has sparked harsh criticisms from some skeptical parents and teachers. The complaints have led to an "opt-out" movement across the state, in which parents are...

It’s interesting that the people who are usually in a fruitless search for Republican fat cats have failed to notice the actual ones for whom Common Core math actually does add up. On September 20, 2013, Michelle Malkin reported that former Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s “educational foundation, the Foundation for Excellence in Education, is tied at the hip to the federally funded testing consortium called PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers), which raked in $186 million through Race to the Top to develop nationalized tests “aligned” to the top-down Common Core program.” “One of the Bush...

10-year-old Elizabeth Blaine dropped the mic at a Montclair, New Jersey, school board meeting Monday night, sharing her support for a policy that lets parents opt out their children from taking the Common Core test, also known as PARCC (Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers). "I love to read. I love to write. I love to do math. But I don’t love the PARCC. Why? Because it stinks," Elizabeth said. "This is crazy!" she continued. "I am one of the most gifted students in my grade (or so my mom says) and I have not...

BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) - BESE submitted a compromise to Governor Jindal regarding next year’s standardized testing. The hope is to reach an agreement in an ongoing dispute regarding Common Core testing. Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education President Chas Roemer, Vice President Jim Garvey and Secretary-Treasurer Holly Boffy conducted a call for members of the media to discuss the resolution. [Link to PDF - the compromise is on page 3] https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9eTEUJnljUqcjB1YWxHT0Ztc3c/edit?pli=1 And another link to the letter from another site (in case that one doesn't work: http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apeleducators.org/resource/resmgr/News_Files/Letter_to_Governor_from_BESE.pdf

On Wednesday Tracy and Mary Finney of Marietta, Georgia were met by a police officer outside their children’s public school and informed they were trespassing on school property because they opposed the school’s process of testing all children. The Finneys, whose children attend West Side Elementary School, had decided to opt their children out of Georgia’s state test, the CRCT. ~~~snip~~~~ Meg Norris, an organizer of United Opt-Out Georgia, told Breitbart News she is “shocked” at how the mandates to test children are being enforced in Georgia. “It’s happening in schools all over Georgia,” Norris said. “Even children who are...

This week, left-wing outlets, like NPR’s quiz show, Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me! and the Huffington Post, as well as the British Telegraph, expressed surprise and concern that the new national Common Core standards will destroy the love of literature. The leftist outlets focused on favorites like Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird, but couldn’t seem to connect this unconstitutional federalization of education with their favorite presidential candidate. They should also be concerned about what the recently released test questions reveal about what the feds want: happy workers for the State. The test questions,...