Free Republic

This is the opposite of what we were told would happen with trillions of taxpayer dollars and an entire generation of children who deserve not to have been guinea pigs in a failed national experiment. For the third time in a row since Common Core was fully phased in nationwide, U.S. student test scores on the nation’s broadest and most respected test have dropped, a reversal of an upward trend between 1990 and 2015. Further, the class of 2019, the first to experience all four high school years under Common Core, is the worst-prepared for college in 15 years, according...

August 2017, Charlottesville: Police disappear even as belligerents advance toward each other, and fighting in the streets begins. The same tactic had been used successfully in Ferguson and Baltimore. Who but President Obama and the respective governors could have given the orders to stand down? Who else but mayors and police chiefs could have expedited such counterintuitive commands? Democrats got their optics. CNN could chant each day that the USA is full of white nationalists and right-wing criminality. Obama must've been proud. Anyone could see that white supremacists lurked on every street. Funny thing: If you wait around for these...

REMEMBER ‘COMMON CORE’ that was forced on American public schools by Barack Hussein Obama and funded by the nation of Qatar? AUGUST 23, 2019 BY BARENAKEDISLAM Well, these are the chilling results: FOIA Uncovers Taxpayer-Funded Islamic Propaganda forced on teachers, ‘Islam Glorified, Christianity Disparaged and America Bashed’. and these are the chilling consequences. Gateway Pundit The Thomas More Law Center, a national nonprofit public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, uncovered a massive Islamic propaganda campaign which is being forced onto teachers in public school systems in Michigan and many other states. TMLC was concerned after hearing about...

Few people have the opportunity to create bold new fake pedagogy. This is an elite, exclusive world. Fake means something guaranteed not to work. You say you teach reading but the kids are illiterate. You say you teach history but your kids don’t know Ben Franklin from Ben Affleck. You say you teach general knowledge but your students can’t find Washington DC on a map of the US. Who can get away with swindles like these? Well, of course, members of our very own Education Establishment can get away with anything. But not ordinary people. Fair warning, this fake-pedagogy business...

politicized atmosphere of today’s factory-style government-monopoly schools. ... many students did not understand English grammar ... Poor preparation, however, was only the tip of the iceberg. Students did not bring books to class, relentlessly complained about homework, and expected high grades regardless of proficiency. ... A department head had been demoted for teaching at a pre-college level and refusing to lower his standards. Senior teachers were dropping out in disgust. ... the school embraced grade inflation ... administrators tacitly urge teachers to lower standards, despite proclaiming the opposite in public. Like the Dodo in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:...

Almost nine years after Idaho adopted Common Core, state officials still can’t say whether the supposedly-more-rigorous education standards have made a positive difference. Worse, mounting evidence from across the country shows the standards are nothing short of a disaster. I asked both Superintendent of Public Instruction Sherry Ybarra’s office and the State Board of Education (SBOE) to supply proof that the standards have worked. Ybarra spokesman Kris Rodine said ISAT test results are one measure that “Idaho students are making progress toward proficiency on higher standards of knowledge and demonstration of skills.” She stopped short of saying the standards, adopted...

Control and pervert education, and you can convince the masses that they no longer want what their parents and grandparents wanted so desperately. Educated people can reflect on what is being done to them. Ignorant people do not know enough to reflect on much of anything. More and more, American students lack basic skills and fundamental knowledge. How can they understand proposals made by politicians, media, and government? Igor Shafarevich, a famous Russian mathematician, wrote a 1980 book called “The Socialist Phenomenon.” Shafarevich explained that enforced equality was a constant obsession of socialists. To achieve it, they were willing to...

Researchers the Obama administration funded to assist Common Core’s rollout recently found, to their surprise, that under Common Core U.S. student achievement has sunk (h/t Lance Izumi). “Contrary to our expectation, we found that [Common Core] had significant negative effects on 4th graders’ reading achievement during the 7 years after the adoption of the new standards, and had a significant negative effect on 8th graders’ math achievement 7 years after adoption based on analyses of NAEP composite scores,” the Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction and Learning (C-SAIL) preliminary study said. “The size of these negative effects, however, was generally small.”...

The name of a Navy veteran may be cleared after he was convicted, fined, and imprisoned for digging ponds in a wooded area near his Montana home, to supply water in case of fire. The Supreme Court has vacated a lower court ruling against Joe Robertson, who was sent to federal prison and ordered to pay $130,000 in restitution through deductions from his Social Security checks. Any definitive legal victory for Robertson would be posthumous, since he died March 18 at age 80. But his lawyers describe the Supreme Court’s action as a “big win” for Robertson’s widow, Carrie, who...

The College Board president behind the recent decision to assign applicants an "adversity score" is the same man who courted controversy pushing Common Core, the national K-12 curriculum standards project that several states adopted, then dropped under pressure from education activists. David Coleman, the architect of Common Core and current president and chief executive of the College Board, has a controversial history with standardized tests and higher learning. Critics claim Common Core, which was designed to establish baseline K-12 curriculum standards but was derided as a power grab from local school boards, should be seen as a cautionary tale. They...

One of my favorite 1960s anecdotes comes from legendary broadcaster Larry King, who tells of attending his first roast at New York City’s Friars Club. There, French actor Maurice Chevalier dared to utter the F-word live on stage. King was practically blown out of his seat. “I thought I’d die,” he recalls. Today, as King himself has noted, the F-bomb — once known as the ultimate forbidden verbal lightning bolt, the Utterance That Must Not Be Named, or at least the word of last resort to use when you’re really hopelessly mad — might as well be growing out of...

Bill Gates is among the richest, most successful people on the planet. He enjoyed a lot of victories until he ventured into a dangerous part of town called Education. He squandered a few billion dollars by becoming entangled with a shady character named Common Core. Since 2010, Gates endured a long, slow defeat, as more people turned against Common Core, and he himself realized that it was not what he had dreamed of. So how did Bill Gates lose his golden touch? Gates, computer man and businessman, trusted data neatly arrayed on monitors. Digital tools could give predictability, consistency, and...

Using the high cost of a college education as cover, Donald Trump and senior advisor/daughter Ivanka released the Proposals to Reform the Higher Education Act. As is always the case whenever Washington uses the word “reform,” the result will be bigger government, more spending, and less liberty. “We need to modernize our higher education system to make it affordable, flexible, and more outcome oriented so that all Americans, young and old, can learn the skills they need to secure and retain good-paying jobs,” Ivanka stated in a call with reporters. Sounds noble, doesn’t it? Did you notice the absence of...

The most striking thing about our public schools is that they have been in perpetual decline for many decades. Why? The government has its own tests called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP); these tests regularly suggest that two-thirds of fourth-graders and eighth-graders are "below proficient" in reading. That's what decline looks like. It's guaranteed those two-thirds will never be literate, as that term has been traditionally used. Some may learn to read in a painful struggling way, but they won't be reading a daily paper or curling up with a good book. And yet, a century ago, this...

I know, I know, you don’t want to think about all the bad public schools out there. Nothing to do with you, right?? Wrong. The effects are oozing through the society. You are in danger. Want safety? Here are three threats you have to overcome: 1) THE EDUCATION ESTABLISHMENT CAN’T BE TRUSTED. Almost a century ago, they took a wrong turn, and went down a road marked SOCIAL ENGINEERING. The problem for everybody else is that these ideologues hope to wreck the society we’ve got, so they can build the collectivized world they dream about. (The honest term would be...

In another reversal of former Florida Gov. Rick Scott's policies, Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered an end to Common Core-type educational standards in the state. DeSantis’ executive order directs Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran to develop a road map for a new way to educate the Sunshine State’s students. Florida moved to a Common Core-type system under Scott, a change aimed at matching standards for other students in the U.S. State leaders made some tweaks to Common Core, and re-branded it as ‘Florida Standards’ but they remain very similar to Common Core. State governors - not the federal government - developed Common...

Posted: Jan 31 2019 02:02PM EST Video Posted: Jan 31 2019 05:11PM EST Updated: Jan 31 2019 05:11PM EST CAPE CORAL, Fla. (FOX 13) - In another reversal of former Florida Gov. Scott's policies, Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered an end to Common Core-type educational standards in Florida. DeSantis’ executive order directs Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran to develop a road map for a new way to educate the sunshine state’s students. Florida moved to a Common Core-type system under former Gov. Rick Scott, a change aimed at matching standards for other students in the U.S. State leaders made some tweaks to...

Since the start of the decade, a million people have moved out of New York. For Andrew Cuomo, that’s not a problem, that’s a victory. It has solidified his party’s hold on power, and it has reshaped the state and its culture in a fashion more congenial to his interests and agenda. ... From the summer of 2017 to the summer of 2018, New York had a net loss in population of more than 48,000. Illinois, another Democrat state, was the second-most abandoned state, with 45,000 net reduction in population. Of the seven other states which had a net loss...

I had a surprise on Thanksgiving weekend. The e-book version of "Saving K-12" reached #5, for a few days, on Amazon in its education category. It's only $3, that may explain the jump. The paperback is $20. There's also a hardcover. The full title tells you the book's purpose: "Saving K-12 – What happened to our public schools? How do we fix them?” My theme is that we can't have much education reform unless the public is more aware of what games the Education Establishment is playing.For testimonials about the writer and info about the book, please see: www.Lit4u.com/saving-k-12/ -------------------------------------------...

Common Core sucked all the energy, money, and motivation right out of desperately needed potential reforms to U.S. public schools for a decade, and for nothing. It’s been about nine years since the Obama administration lured states into adopting Common Core sight unseen, with promises it would improve student achievement. Like President Obama’s other big promises — “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” — this one’s been proven a scam. “If you set and enforce rigorous and challenging standards and assessments; if you put outstanding teachers at the front of the classroom; if you turn around...