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A concerned Williamson County [Tenn.] parent stumbled upon < a href="http://www.menacommoncore.com">this, “On October 24 and 25, hundreds of schools, leadership teams, and teachers from across the region will gather in Dubai, to learn about the Common Core State Standards, share curricula and best practices, and network with each other.” "If Common Core is local and state-led why are they holding Common Core conferences in the Middle East including more than 20 other nations? If Williamson Strong is local and parent-led why is their logo included among the international organizations sponsoring this event?” asks Julie West. And, what is MENA? Middle...

Our children are our world as parents. They are the future of our nation. Most of us would gladly sacrifice all we have and our lives for our little ones. So, why do we so readily hand their learning and their care over to those that would abuse them and trick them into being part of the greatest evil the world has ever known? It figures that the young, innocent ones would be a prime target for Islam and are what they term, ‘fertile ground’ for their broken philosophy. Between such programs as Common Core, Connect All Schools and CSCOPE,...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ8Nr3_2724

Proponents of the Common Core standards are hailing educational theorist E.D. “Don” Hirsch as a founding father of the education initiative and one who laid the intellectual groundwork for the controversial reform. The problem is that Hirsch himself says, “I hate to be godfather of something that is not going to work.”

Study Finds Common Core English and Math Standards Not Properly ValidatedSome Validation Committee members refused to attest that the standards are comparable to those in the world’s highest-performing countries BOSTON – Five of the 29 members of the Common Core Validation Committee refused to sign a report attesting that the standards are research-based, rigorous and internationally benchmarked.  The report was released with 24 signatures and included no mention that five committee members refused to sign it, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute. Common Core’s Validation: A Weak Foundation for a Crooked House Download 7.76 MB | 779...

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Jennifer Craig stared at her daughter’s fifth-grade math homework. It was a three-digit multiplication problem, and it seemed simple enough. But her 10-year-old was supposed to solve it by drawing a chart, breaking apart numbers, multiplying, adding and maybe more. “I’m lost,” said Craig, a 31-year-old stay at home mother of three. And that’s how she found herself in her daughter’s classroom Monday night, sitting alongside other parents in child-size chairs and listening as teacher Alyshia Thomas explained new math strategies. Most U.S. public school students are learning math very differently than their parents did, due to...

[T]he current "Common Core" mandate, by which the federal government has enlisted the states to federalize the U.S. school curriculum, cut[s] off traditional local control. Once you control what is taught, you needn’t care where, by whom, or how that is done, you have eliminated all competitors... Common Core represents a fair start toward total federal control of U.S. education... [T]he Progressives so enamored of "diversity" are... dead set against any diversity in educating citizens... [I]f one recalls the works of John Dewey, the patron saint of the progressive education movement, the avowed goal is... to turn out useful and...

Parents of a boy enrolled in Manhattan Beach Middle School are pulling their son out of class because the school is teaching children the tents of Islam, Los Angeles news station KTLA reports. The father said, “The audacity of this school, to think that they can sit these children down and teach ’em whatever religion they please; it’s preposterous. This is illegal, basically. You can’t teach religion in schools any more, but apparently, in this particular school, at least, that’s not the case.” Parents said they discovered that what their children were learning about Islam was more about the tenets...

Around a year ago, this column ran a piece entitled “Whatever Happened To Science?” As Baby Boomers will recall, during our early youth, our little heads were crammed full of the promise of Science: Abundant cheap electrical power; the discovery of the structure of DNA would (somehow) lead to curing every disease, and the polio vaccine seemed to demonstrate this; our soaring postwar economy could easily fund ever more dramatic breakthroughs. But then, as the 1960s dawned, reality set in. An extraordinary number of people were dying of heart disease, and good old Watson & Crick (or Salk & Sabin)...

Parents of students at Littleton Green Community School were outraged after they found out that if their children decided not to attend a controversial field trip, they would be officially deemed racist. The trip was to a religious workshop about the Muslim faith, and administration warned that a “racial discrimination note” would be added to the students’ school records, should they fail to join. As to be expected, parents did not take the information lightly, especially since the class consisted of children as young as eight years old.

Until recently the mainstream media has portrayed the opponents of Common Core to be just a bunch of conservative yahoos incapable of understanding what a wonderful education program it is. However that might now be changing. Last night, NBC Nightly News surprisingly broadcast a segment highly critical of Common Core. The segment showed just how confusing and lacking in common sense common core is. Although it portrayed teachers as mostly satisfied with the program while parents were distressed, it is hard to imagine any how any sane person can see the utility of Common Core which as you will see...

On both coasts, grandparents are learning to apply a modern-day rule of thumb with surprising accuracy: If it looks inane, it’s probably Common Core. “The Berkeley school district's curriculum for sixth-grade math was an exact copy of the Common Core State Standards for the grade,” Marina Ratner wrote in The Wall Street Journal on August 5, 2014. “The teacher in my grandson's class went through special Common Core training courses.” “As his assigned homework and tests indicate, when teaching fractions, the teacher required that students draw pictures of everything: of 6 divided by 8, of 4 divided by 2/7, of...

The father of a La Plata High School student has been barred from the school grounds after officials said he threatened to disrupt the school environment. Kevin Wood was issued a no-trespass order last week after a telephone call with La Plata High Vice Principal Shannon Morris on Thursday. Wood called to air complaints regarding his daughter’s world history assignment that asked students to examine elements of the Islamic religion. Morris and La Plata High Principal Evelyn Arnold reported to the Charles County Public Schools central office that Wood in his phone call had threatened to upset the school environment...

Common Core could be called ObamaEd. It's as much a signature issue as ObamaCare. Indeed, it has the same goals: more government power, more control of individual citizens, more jobs and money under White House control. In short, Common Core is Obama's baby. A Democrat who opposed Common Core would be accused of stabbing the President in the back. As a practical political matter, Democrats cannot be against Common Core. And that alone is ample justification for keeping them out of office. Common Core is a nightmare that everyone should be against.If you don't know how bad it is, check...

DENVER — Results for a new standardized test for science and social studies came in on Monday and they likely put frowns on educators and parents. ... Just 17 percent of Colorado fourth- and seventh-graders scored “strong” or “distinguished” on social studies tests. Those are the scores necessary to for students to be considered on track to be ready for college and a career, ... Achievement gaps still persisted between white and students of color. For example, in fourth-grade social studies, 6 percent of Hispanic/Latino students and 7 percent of African-American students have “strong” or “distinguished command” of the subject....

Michael Bloomberg, in addition to having been Mayor of New York City and currently being a wealthy elitist Leftist, has ongoing ties to the Islamic world and Qatar. In fact, many of his regulatory moves and his philanthropy efforts are connected to one degree or another with Qatar and Islamic nations, causes and endeavors. Qatar, the reader should be reminded, is the host country of the Muslim Brotherhood and is the primary supporter of the Arab Spring, including the genocidal Islamic State. Common Core is a huge, Progressive educational implementation in New York City which benefits Microsoft and a host...

Among the 34 OECD countries, the US performed below average in mathematics and is ranked 27th ... While the U.S. spends more per student than most countries, this does not translate into better performance (e.g. the Slovak Republic, which spends around $53k per student, performs at the same level as the US, which spends over $115k per student).

COSTA MESA (CBSLA.com) — A discussion over the controversial new curriculum, known as Common Core, got heated Monday night in Costa Mesa during a special meeting at the Orange County Board of Education. Those on both sides of the initiative, which encompasses state standards, spoke out although no decision was reached during the meeting. “Our job is to educate students. To look at both sides. And I think that that’s what Common Core wants you to do. Critical thinking,” said one attendee. But even some teachers admit that no one really knows what Common Core is. “I think it’s supposed...

President Obama’s favorite think tank Center for American Progress (CAP), wants to align standardized tests with Common Core standards. Recently, at CAP: • Nancy DePalma, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment, West Hartford Public Schools, said that her district “totally redesigned our curriculum with Common Core” which “gives the teachers in-the-moment assessment” in classroom settings. • Maura Henry, a teacher at The Young Women's Leadership School of Astoria in New York City, argued that, “Parents aren’t really anti-testing, but [anti-]over-testing” and need to be reassured they aren’t “being tricked” by the state education agencies and their tests. Henry said...

Democrats for Education Reform biggest spender in two races. A political committee affiliated with Democrats for Education Reform has spent nearly $126,866 in two State Board of Education races, and the group’s state director indicates more such spending is planned. That amount is more than five times the combined $22,560 spent as of Oct. 8 by Democratic candidates Henry Roman and Jane Goff from their own campaign treasuries. ... Kerrie Dallman, president of CEA, said the union’s interest is less with the political composition of the board than it is with candidates whose views match CEA priorities. Other education sources...