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Last week, the New York Times published a lengthy report on Hillary Clinton’s Common Core conundrum. Today, she commented in Iowa that the debate over the failed Fed Ed standards was “painful” to her (debate is always painful to control freaks in both parties) because it started out as a “bipartisan” effort (Big Government/Big Business alliances are always bipartisan). For those on the Left hoping that their lioness will come out against the Common Core racket, here’s my reminder that the top-down, data-mining, teacher-undermining scheme had its roots with Hillary’s education allies back in the 1990s.

In the early 1970s, Michael Lerner (who would become an important adviser to Hillary Clinton) authored THE NEW SOCIALIST REVOLUTION, in which he proclaimed: "Education will be radically transformed in our socialist community...the main emphasis will be on learning how to... live and work collectively....The next level is learning some series of skills, for one's first set of jobs." In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected president, taking office in January 1981. Over the next several years, Carter administration holdovers left the National Institute of Education (within USDOE). One of them, Marc Tucker (an NIE Associate Director) went to the newly...

Meanwhile, that little Noah and Amanda you sent off to school will be coming back home as another Al Gore The next generation of global warming-spouting Al Gore-type activists are already in training in America’s classrooms. The big lie called man-made global warming, birthed by the United Nations and lib-left world leaders out to make a fast buck in the impossible-to-fail money maker advanced on society by global warming/climate change, is here to stay. As permanent a fixture in modern society as career politicians and rising taxes, the future of global warming will be played forward by school children, who...

Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio) said on Sunday that he had the strongest political background of any 2016 presidential candidate.  “I think it’s the best resume and a terrific record,” Kasich told host Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Kasich has long teased a White House run next year but has not yet publicly declared a bid. “I’m optimistic about where we are,” he said

As opposition to Common Core began to swell in Tennessee, Jeb Bush showed up to an education forum in March of last year, advocating for state officials to keep the higher standards in place. Now, a little more than a year later, Bush returned to Nashville Saturday night to address the state's GOP dinner, but his push for the state to hold onto Common Core didn't succeed. Earlier this month, Republican Gov. Bill Haslam signed a bill to review the controversial standards and rebrand them with a Tennessee-specific focus. The bill was widely viewed as a compromise between Common Core...

Private school kids can read. Classical academy kids can read. Montessori school kids can read. Homeschooled kids can read. Spot the pattern? It’s only kids in public schools who can’t read. Why is that? You would think our education professors would figure out what the schools are doing wrong. In fact, they have not figured out very much in the last 80 years. Our professors seem mainly concerned with perpetuating the wrong ways to teach reading. And so the crisis continues. Truth is, reading is easy to teach and easy to learn. All the phonics experts agree: reading is no...

My antennae go up whenever any education initiative is associated with radicals, like Bill Ayers. We still don’t know why Bill Ayers was at an education conference with Arne Duncan and a representative from Achieve, the well-connected, Washington-based non-profit organizing this effort to nationalize education. But once I began investigating the curricula and test questions I learned that sure enough, the rigorous “standards” turned out to be nothing more than efforts to impose a curriculum that will make global citizens out of all American students. Or the kind of curriculum Bill Ayers would like.

Common Core has many players in the background that most of us are not aware of. This has been a long-time coming, and a hard-sell for a vast cast of Progressives, but sell it they did, and eventually it received the clueless support of state Governors and departments of Education who thought Race-to-the-Top bribes would shore up state education coffers. Surely, no one would teach that the Boston Tea Party was a terrorist action or that Allah is “God,” or that Shariah law provides for the poor and has an exceptional code of moral conduct. Who would believe that could happen in America, but...

Interview with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal

As a public service, we try to track the progress, or lack thereof, of the latest top-down education reform concocted by elites and insiders—Common Core. We are aided immeasurably by the Heartland Institute which publishes updates on Common Core’s setbacks and advances in School Reform News. In the May issue, we learn that: • The governor of Mississippi vetoed a commission on Common Core; • “Ohio may soon give certain school districts the option of creating their own exams;” and • Montana parents went to court to repeal Common Core. Meanwhile, parents fighting Common Core still face uphill struggles in...

Ayers was one of three keynote speakers at a major conference organized by a consortium of schools of education at some 30 or so middle sized universities called The Renaissance Group. Ayers was given the only keynote luncheon speaker spot at the conference. The two morning keynote speakers were none other than Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education – and former foe of Ayers (and Obama) in the Chicago School Wars, and Undersecretary of Education Martha Kanter. A major theme of the Renaissance organization is finding ways to educate the “New American Student,” as described in a statement published a...

(Nov 27, 2013) Referred to as ‘Common Core lead standards authors’ by the Council of Chief State School Officers, David Coleman and Jason Zimba are just two in a long list of Common Core creators whose academic roots are with the education-for-a-revolution machine borne by Annenberg Institute, Carnegie Corporation, Bill Gates, et al. Today, Coleman and Zimba are head of Student Achievement Partners, an organization that played a leading role in developing the standards and actively supports districts and states in implementing them. Prior to Student Achiement Partners, Coleman and Zimba were co-founders of the Grow Network (now owned by...

My husband and I attended a small meeting in 2011 when Sen. Ted Cruz was running for his U. S. Senate seat.  As a retired classroom teacher, my plan was to explain to Cruz how the Obama administration planned to take over the public schools of America through the Common Core Standards Initiative (CCSI).  Thinking Cruz would be just like so many other politicians who have been asleep about CCSI while it has been sweeping over our country since 2009, I started in on my explanation.  Almost immediately Ted Cruz began to agree with me vociferously and quickly let all...

The proposed adoption of $300,000 worth of reading materials for Cody, Wyoming students stalled this week amid criticisms about the curriculum’s “very liberal, very slanted view of the world.” School board and community members spoke out against a slate of proposed materials for K-12 students that cover topics like global warming, evolution and race. The materials are published by education giant Pearson and Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ... that aligns with the national Common Core standards. But many in the community are concerned about how the texts address issues like global warming, which is treated as settled science ......

29:00 [click on picture then click on red dot to listen]

Some market watchers, such as Cornerstone Analytics (CA), have consistently stated that the underestimation of demand, coupled with over-estimation of supply, will mask the growing call on OPEC oil in the second half of this year. CA recently noted that global demand outstripped supply by some 4 million barrels in April . This comes in addition to the mounting evidence that the oil market, via rig count declines, slowing production growth, higher demand and huge API crude inventory declines, is starting to readjust. Be that as it may, Goldman Sachs (GS) seems to believe oil must fall to $45 by...

What happens when the public does not wish to live out the utopian dreams of its elite leaders?[snip] How, then, do politically correct planners force the people to think and act properly when they push back? Extra-legal executive orders can help a president bypass supposed troglodytes in Congress and among the public. Obama granted blanket amnesties, proposed rules that would lead to the closure of many coal plants and arbitrarily chose which health or labor statutes should be enforced and at what times. A filmmaker was even jailed on a trumped-up probation charge after making a video about Islam.....[snip] As...

President Obama just gave the commencement address to the graduating class of the Coast Guard academy.

A Boston University professor has defended to WND his creation of a Common Core-compliant lesson plan that uses role-playing workshops to teach students to sympathize with Hamas, create a Palestinian state and divide the city of Jerusalem. Professor Carl Hobert’s “Whose Jerusalem?” project has been lauded by those at the pinnacle of the education establishment as an important work that will, in the words of Boston University School of Education Dean Hardin Coleman, “help students acquire the skills they need” in conflict resolution “to be successful in the 21st century.” But the role-playing exercises have also come under fire recently...

The state Education Department has rejected all 15 applications for new charter schools, including 12 in New York City, claiming they failed to meet academic standards. “We always look for quality and these applications didn’t measure up,” Education Department spokesman Dennis Tompkins said Wednesday. “We invited several of the applicants to reapply in June and we gave them suggestions on how to improve their applications.” But charter-school advocates weren’t buying it, saying the rejection of all the applicants reeked of pro-teacher-union politics. “The timing and nature of these blanket rejections should raise serious concerns for New Yorkers ... Mayor de...