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If you live in Wisconsin or any state that supports "local control" of schools, here is some exciting news. School districts that replace Common Core Standards with a different set of standards are entitled to receive state and federal funding. The process is simple. It is time to stop complaining and take some action. Become a voice for the children. [....] Those states that are not local control states have the right to reject Common Core Standards and replace them with a preferable set of standards according to Article 10 in the U.S. Constitution and to three federal statutes: The...

Like many school districts, mine accepted government funds promising to install common core.

Parents in a Nashville suburb expressed alarm this week because their middle school children are learning about Islam in a world history class but, they say, the school is pointedly ignoring Christianity. Brandee Porterfield, who has a seventh-grade daughter at Spring Hill Middle School in Spring Hill, Tenn., said her daughter came home with world history schoolwork all about the Five Pillars of Islam and other core teachings of the Abrahamic religion. Specifically, according to Spring Hill Home Page, Porterfield said her daughter’s world history project was based around the Five Pillars. The first and most important pillar — the shahada in Arabic...

Brandee Porterfield doesn’t think her daughter should be assigned to write “Allah is the only god; Mohammad is his prophet” as a school assignment. “To me, a Christian child should not be made to write that,” Porterfield, mother of a seventh grader at Spring Hill Middle School, told the Columbia Daily News. She also takes offense to what she said is a three week focus on Islam in her daughter’s history course, especially since the class skipped past a chapter on Christianity – the predominant religion in Tennessee. “I have a big problem with that,” Porterfield said. “From a historical...

Even when teachers don’t appear to be complaining about Common Core they actually are, because CC is so unpopular that bureaucrats and politicians try to camouflage it. Yet and still, like the spots on a leopard, C squared’s trademarks are becoming easy to spot. For example, on his personal blog, Bronx teacher Jamaal Bowman complained about the Tyranny of Standardized Testing but the CC standards are fairly simple to discern. I tried to make them even easier by italicizing: “As a classroom teacher, the state test jargon became part of the lexicon. We were told to focus more on “non...

Students in South Dakota will now graduate from high school without studying early American history, under new teaching guidelines adopted by the state. After a year of deliberations, the state Board of Education adopted new curriculum standards that no longer require instructors to teach the first 100 years of U.S. history. Such milestone events and developments as the Revolutionary War and the drafting of the U.S. Constitution could be completely ignored. Cutting out early U.S. history in 11th grade hurts the ability of students to “think historically” when they reach higher education, according to a letter sent to the state...

Mitchell, a former assistant district attorney, says his comments were not an endorsement of shoplifting. A University of Wisconsin-Madison official claims laws against shoplifting are just an excuse to over-police minority communities. “I just don’t think that they should be prosecuting cases… for people who steal from Wal-Mart,” said Everett Mitchell, director of community relations for the university, during an on-campus event. “I don’t think [with] Target or all them other places, them big box stores that have insurance, they should be using the fact that people steal from there as justification to start engaging in aggressive police practices, right?”...

Results for some of the states that participated in Common Core-aligned testing for the first time this spring are out, with overall scores higher than expected though still below what many parents may be accustomed to seeing. Full or preliminary scores have been released for Connecticut, Idaho, Missouri, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia. They all participated in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, one of two groups of states awarded $330 million by the U.S. Department of Education in 2010 to develop exams to test students on the Common Core state standards in math and English language arts. Scores in...

Alice Linahan hosts the Women On the Wall Conference Call with special guest Antia Hoge on the devastating agenda behind the Re-Authorization of ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965)Here is a link to the full conference call~ Alice-linahan – Anita-hoge-and-lynne-taylor-on-women-on-the-wall-with-alice-linahan Documents and links to prove Anita in right. HR5 - www.congress.gov/114/bills/hr5/BILLS-114hr5pcs.pdf Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative- www.whitehouse.gov/administration/…-revitalization Anita Hoge's post Just the Page HR5 Student Success Act - womenonthewall.org/wp-content/uplo…bers-S-1177.pdf RTI & PBIS Response to Intervention & Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports Data Based Individualization- womenonthewall.org/wp-content/uplo…CHOBABBLE-2.pdf Positive Behavior Intervention and Support and Comprehensive School and Community Treatment Process Document womenonthewall.org/wp-content/uplo…S_Checklist.pdf

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Michael Petrilli recently wrote an apologetic op-ed for Fordham’s e-mail newsletter entitled “The new ESEA will be ‘loose-loose’ because Arne Duncan went overboard with ‘tight-tight’.” arne duncan A champion for Common Core, a top-down, federal government mandated education curriculum, Petrilli reversed course on his opinions of Arne Duncan’s Department of Education and its overreach in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). He admitted he’s changed his views and took issue with criticism over this change. Petrilli noted the criticism from an “Obama administration alumnus” Chad Aldeman, currently at Bellwether Education Partners...

Kasich’s decision to expand Medicaid under Obamacare—a move that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled was optional and up to state discretion—is a sore subject for fiscal conservatives and led to him being, not just left out of an event held in his backyard, but attacked by several of the event’s speakers, including former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and AFP President Tim Phillips. Obamacare critics do not like how the law allows Medicaid, originally enacted as a safety net to provide health coverage for poor mothers and children, to be expanded to cover able-bodied, working-age adults. Federal funds cover the costs...

Donald Trump held his first town hall meeting Wednesday night before a rowdy Derry, New Hampshire crowd that cheered, chimed in and booed when he mentioned his presidential rivals. "These are my people," a gleeful Trump said. Jeb Bush, the establishment favorite, was nine miles away holding a simultaneous town hall event, and Trump couldn't help but comment on the man who's crown he appears — at least for now — to have taken and whom he has described as an unenthusiastic candidate. "Right down the road we have Jeb. Very small crowd," Trump said. "We have 2,500. … There...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and other 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls on Wednesday endorsed school vouchers as a means of driving competition and innovation in the nation's school systems. "Why not allow total voucherization? Nevada is moving in this direction," Bush said at a New Hampshire education summit. "Let the suppliers come up with the creative solutions, have high expectations and accountability, and get out of the way." Bush said schools would benefit from "innovation" since "the system we have today is still designed as though it was in the 1930's."

Jeb Bush and John Kasich get failing grades on Common Core, while Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are the only Republicans running for president to escape blame on the thorny education issue, according to a new analysis from a conservative think tank. The Hill got an exclusive first look at a report card produced by the American Principles in Action that grades the GOP candidates on how fiercely they oppose Common Core, the set of education standards that were adopted by 46 states five years ago but have since become toxic with the conservative base Nearly the entirety of the...

On paper, Jeb Bush is the perfect establishment candidate for the Republican presidential nomination: A two-term governor of a crucial swing state who oversaw economic expansion and spearheaded education reform. A conservative, but with a cerebral, optimistic tone that probably won't enrage moderate voters, unlike the unabashed social-issue warriors in the GOP field. A prolific fundraiser whose advantage stems from the powerful donor networks of his brother, former President George W. Bush, and his father, former President George H.W. Bush. Yet the former Florida governor — for all his might on paper — has failed to catch on with Republican...

As Ted Cruz traipses through the South, his mentions of one Republican draw more derision than that of any Democrat, President Obama and presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton included. Jeb Bush. During campaign stops Monday and Tuesday in Tennessee and Mississippi, Cruz's references to the former Florida governor, now a staple of the senator's stump speech, often elicited loud booing, sometimes accompanied by scattered shouts of "Establishment!" or "RINO!" (Republican In Name Only). For months, the Republican Texas senator has been alluding to Bush as the archetypal moderate, insufficiently conservative and guaranteed to shut the GOP out of the White House...

Jeb Bush stepped onto the fabled soapbox under a broiling sun at the Iowa State Fair here Friday and offered himself to voters as a sober adult campaigning in a summer of anger — a reformer, a consensus-builder, a competent executive who would roll up his sleeves and fix things. "I’m tired of the divides," the former Florida governor said. "I campaign the way that I would govern — out amongst everybody, no rope lines, totally out in the open." Then the fairgoers started asking Bush questions. They asked about the legacy of his brother, a former president. And his...

Ted Cruz offered rare and most likely tongue-in-cheek praise to his ideological rival, Jeb Bush, for his "candor" in not backing down from his more moderate positions on immigration and Common Core. Cruz, who has looked to position himself as the furthest-right candidate in the field, said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday that he appreciated that Bush, who may be the GOP's furthest to the left, was not changing his positions. "There are candidates in the field who attempt to change their position to do better in primaries, and Jeb Bush has demonstrated a remarkable candor defending positions,"...

Transparently Predictable Political “Tripwires”.. August 10, 2015 First the good news ! Many people are beginning to have the awakening, the fundamental paradigm shift needed to understand the rather complex construct of the GOPe machine. At the request of many people who are only recently accepting the scope of the ruse, that is the 2016 GOP primary, we are going to begin identifying the “tripwires” before they are crossed, and then highlighting the tripwire WHEN it is crossed. Yesterday we told you of a specific “tripwire” to look for. Today, we share what it looks like moments before it is...

Hillary Clinton on Monday rolled out a sweeping higher education plan — a $350 billion proposal that would help millions pay for college and reduce interest rates for people with student loans. The plan, which would change the way a large swath of Americans pay for college, borrows ideas from the left and the right and even expands a program enacted by her husband. It includes ideas already being discussed in Congress and for which groundwork has been laid by the Obama administration. The proposal, dubbed the New College Compact, is unlikely to win over many in the GOP because...