Tag Archive for: Common Core

The Politics of Common Core: FL State Board of Education Poised to approve Common Core 2/18/14 at Orlando Board meeting

With breathtaking hubris, Governor Scott’s Education Commissioner, Pam Stewart, has ignored experts and citizens loud cries to stop the giant experiment called Common Core, which could damage a generation of children.  But this is not just a move born of benign ignorance, it is a political calculation.

The stakes in their games are enormous.  The Governorship and the Presidency could hang in the balance.  Early speculation comes from past experience.  Just what is happening behind the scenes?  It certainly doesn’t take a mental giant to see that Governor Scott is leaning on support from his predecessor, Jeb Bush and his new friends, who promised and delivered support and influence to win the last election.

The growing rift between the Republican Party groups and the Republican Party of Florida was nowhere more apparent than the recent annual state meeting.  County Executive Committees voted to oppose Common Core and were overruled in the end by the Executive Committee, Jeb Bush’s cabal, squeezing the grassroots out of the party in Florida.  They assert that we must blindly go along with Governor Scott’s adamant support of Common Core because we certainly don’t want a major rift in support to allow “Charlie Hippochrist” to steal the election.

Newsflash!  Charlie Christ is ahead of Scott in the polls and gaining.  Continuing his path of isolated decision making on this and other issues is not bolstering Scott’s campaign.  So WHY is he supporting this unpopular, anti-conservative position on Common Core?  Two words….Jeb Bush, and the promise his new support team will carry Scott over the finish line a winner.

You see, Jeb Bush is playing his own game here for yet a larger prize, the presidency, and this political calculation has worked for Jeb Bush before.  This interesting article from the St. Pete Times shows how Jeb Bush uses foundations to gather money and power to unleash a successful campaign.

When he narrowly lost his bid to be Governor, he needed a way to stay in the mix and build strength.  His foundation provided a way to collect money and support and it worked.  Flash forward, the conservative “education governor” of Florida embraces Common Core before the standards are even developed and his foundation gets $501,000 as a first installment.  He joins with Bill Gates Foundation, GE, Eli Broad Foundation, Pearson Education and many more multi-billion dollar groups who can provide as much money and power as he could ever need and a nationwide platform of education reform.

Just one problem, Common Core is a Trojan horse delivering poisonous messages to our children, not a “reform” at all.  His “team” includes unpopular multi-nationalist billionaires who stand to gain more money and power by “Transforming” America through the hearts and minds of the children.  The book recently written by Dr. Terrence Moore called “The Story-Killers” shows just how this is done.

Florida is ground zero for this high stakes game.  If Common Core collapses, his “money tree” coalition likely will suffer a similar fate.

This is all coming to a head as Anti-Common Core groups mobilize against this assault on their families and their future.  “Healthcare, concerns me.  But when they are contaminating the hearts and minds of our children, this is where we draw the line!”  Kathy Doan, co-founder of Stop Common Core FL,  said.

And she is joined by leaders from over 50 groups within Florida who are not fooled by the bait and switch maneuvers by this administration.  On the 18thof February, the State Board of Education plans to vote on changing the name of Common Core and adopting it in spite of huge opposition from parents, teachers, administrators and children.

A rally is planned for Feb 18th by these groups to demonstrate their disgust with the Department of Education, its Board, Governor Scott who appointed them, and Jeb Bush for promoting this campaign for his political gain.  For information, call Chris Quackenbush, 239-823-2980

We are also advertising on radio against Common Core and sharing our ads with others across the country to grow opposition everywhere. Tax deductible contributions may be made to www.ivbe.org to increase our ad coverage.

Why Common Core is Wrong For Our Kids – Period!

The document, “Common Core is Wrong For Our Kids. Period” from Florida Parents Against Common Core (FPACC) has just been released. The document explains why there is a growing mistrust with Common Core.

FPACC states, “Parents are not radicals, we are concerned… and we are basing our conclusions on the words from the proponents themselves, not from editorials.  I urge you to read the entire document to understand why there is such a growing grassroots opposition to Common Core. Parents across America are just fed up.”

Watch this video titled, “Common Core For Public Officials”:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfcJuV4dC6g[/youtube]

Members of our group, Florida Parents Against Common Core have produced a detailed document outlining why Common Core and Race To The Top are wrong for our children and our parents.  This document will help you understand the process by which we have come to have Common Core State Standards imposed on us, against our will and without the proper involvement of parents in discussing the validity of the premise and potential impacts. Additionally, it details how this process was never more than a wholesale transfer of sovereignty by our state legislators to the Federal Government in exchange for a $ 700 million dollar bribe.

The proponents, backed by a campaign of several hundred million dollars in the best public relations resources available, all stand to gain billions of dollars in benefits in the form of new business, the quashing of competitive forces and the in some instances, the advancement of personal political ambitions, all through a grand experiment constructed of an untested theory of education, the brainchild of a man who has never taught a day in his life.

Download: Common Core is Wrong For Our Kids.

RELATED COLUMN: Breaking News Stories: Rejection of Common Core and Its Tests: Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, New Hampshire, Congressional Leadership and More

Common Core nationalizes absurdity, superficiality, and political bias

AWC Family Foundation lecture: “Story-Killers: How the Common Core Destroys Minds and Souls” lecture given by Terrence O. Moore, Professor of History, Hillsdale College on Thursday, January 9, 2014.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/2npftyFvkWo[/youtube]

The Common Core Standards control the testing and curriculum of public schools and a large number of private schools in over forty states in the nation. Sold to the public as a needed reform, the Common Core nationalizes absurdity, superficiality, and political bias in the American classroom. As a result, the great stories of a great nation are at risk, along with the minds and souls of our children.

Terrence O. Moore is an assistant professor of history at Hillsdale College. A former Marine with a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh, he served as the founding principal of a top K-12 classical school in Colorado and advises Hillsdale’s Charter School Initiative, providing assistance with the formation of classical charter schools across the country. Dr. Moore is the author of The Perfect Game and The Story-Killers: A Common Sense Case Against the Common Core.

Open letter to FL Gov. Rick Scott: Common Core amounts to “Felony Assault of Child Abuse”

The implementation of Common Core State Standards in Florida is a heated topic. A growing number of parents, teachers, educators and concerned citizens are standing against its implementation. Over 25 county Republican Executive Committees and the Republican Party of Florida have passed resolutions against Common Core. Florida Governor Rick Scott has tried to silence the opposition but has failed so far. Even when the Florida Department of Education changed the name of common core to “Florida Standards”, we called it putting lipstick on a pig.

There are indications that if Scott does not state firmly that he is against Common Core and support FL Rep. Debbie Mayfield‘s proposed legislation HB 25, which stops implementation until certain actions are taken, he will lose his base. The same base that got him elected Governor as the non-establishment candidate. Governor Scott is up for reelection in November and some see his failure to oppose Common Core as pandering to teachers unions and Jeb Bush supporters for votes. His pandering strategy may backfire.

To understand just how angry people are we decided to post one of the dozens of email letters being sent to Governor Scott. The letters were prompted by a column we posted titled, “FL Governor Rick Scott pressures Republicans to not oppose Common Core.

Don Kempus from Orlando, in an open letter sent to Governor Rick Scott, states “Implementation of the CCSS amounts to Felony Assault of child abuse on the Charges to be  brought upon you as individuals and as legislators.” Kempus signs the letter as a “Patriot,  Oathkeeper and John Birch Society member.” When asked if he will file a lawsuit against Governor Scott, Kempus replied, “I will not file a lawsuit, but will be filing criminal charges thru a grand jury in the near future.”

Following is the full text of the Kempus letter sent to us.

Dear Governor

It seems to me that all, and I mean all of the current crop of so-called legislators (people who act upon but never read their bills they vote on) ,  don’t have the least bit of idea what the end result of the common core standards are about or what they will do to the school children of this state. Why not call a SPADE, a SPADE.? All you guys care about is getting money to be reelected and don’t give one iota about the children being affected by your actions. Implementation of the CCSS amounts to Felony Assault of child abuse on the Charges to be  brought upon you as individuals and as legislators. When the kids start graduating ( merely being passed thru) from high school to college, I guarantee you they will come back and sue all of you for the lack of an adequate education to live a life of freedom, liberty and a pursuit to happiness that will never be enjoyed due to their inherently taught ignorance of history and COMMON SENSE LIVING . You all should be ashamed of yourselves for implementing a program that you know absolutely nothing about. You have been sold a bill of goods from that socialist Jeb Bush who is making a ton of money and soliciting prestige for his connections while forcing the issue on implementing the CCSS. To me, this is treasonous extortion and blackmail. Goes along with his other crimes of fraud, deceit and theft of the public trust.

I defy any of you to give a brief explanation of the CCSS and what it is teaching our kids in the critical thought process without notes and in person.  It has been proven that they are being taught to come up with answers that have no correct answers to them. There are seniors coming out and openly decrying the damage this system is doing to their educational psyche. They are begging you to stop it now. The sad part about this is, you legislators are not listening. The kids are starting to cry to their parents about the problems with trying to learn something that has no answers. You have a bunch of egocentric state and federal government legislators forcing their will for the sake of the almighty dollar in their pockets. Over the past 100 years, we have taught a classical education strong enough to enable 4  generations of individuals to accomplish the impossible, make great advances in science, industry, medical  and strides in the health and welfare of the American people and created the greatest nation ever to live in the history of mankind. It was not until the Federal government put their fingers on the education of our children that the system began to fail. Add in the legislation of non-educators and we were on a road to ruination.

We put people on the moon for God’s sake and sent them countless times into space and back. This was not due to some Marxist/socialist, homocysteic and fascist ideology that is hell bent on destroying that which has made us great. This was done on the back of a hard working, capitalistic, free society that had hope, love and compassion for their fellow man and a strong will to do the right thing.  Now you want to openly coerce your local political organizations not to oppose a system that is proven to be destroying your kid’s education.  WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN,  WHERE IS THEIR VOICE?  WHO WILL LOOK OUT FOR THEM!!! I can tell you that many parents are waking up and you will eventually be sued for your gross negligence and malfeasance of office. We can prove that the CCSS is not state led, but extorted into place by a federal government that is openly extorting your permission to implement the program by dangling a few dollars in front of your noses.    Tell them to keep it and change how you measure the amount that the State of Florida should be paying to the Federal overreach. Do not pay them for overstepping their bounds.     The Federal DOJ is now going to tell you how to discipline our school children? What’s next? Telling the parents how to raise the children! Taking the kids and sending them off to factories and fields to do the work of slaves!! To what end? All for the rich corporate snobs that contribute illegal contributions is outrageous quantities to your so-called Super PACS. This will stop soon in the future as well. We are being made aware of the fraud and deceit in this program as well and will be fighting to change it. It is time as one potential Republican, Joshua Black said,  “ It is time to call out the government regulators and president for their treasonous actions, convict their guilt and have them openly hanged.” After we clean out Washington, we should also clean out the state and local frauds and liars as well.  Florida is a political disgrace. I also think we need to clean out the Curry’s and Scotts (removal of Finch without proper cause and investigation) out of office as well. They don’t have the right to silence and remove someone from the party, but have a right not to listen to them is they choose. Their latest actions are far worse than Mr. Black’s open truthful comments.

I urge you to pass Debbie Mayfield’s HB 25 and later get on the bandwagon to stop the Federal government’s projected attempts to take away our 2nd Amendment rights and not allow them to go to the U.N. We will not register our arms nor will we give them up to lawless regulations and legislators.  REMEMBER IT IS THE CHILDREN WHOM WE ARE LEGISLATING FOR, NOT JEB BUSH, NOT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, AND CERTAINLY NOT THE CORPORATE WORLD.    It boils down to who is more important,  Common Core or The Children????

Don Kepus,
Patriot,  Oathkeeper and John Birch Society member
Orlando, Florida

Governor Rick Scott was in Orlando last year to address the Americans For Prosperity 7th Annual Defending the American Dream Summit. Near the end of his prepared remarks he addressed education in Florida. At that point the shouts to “stop Common Core” became louder and louder. At one point the entire room of over 1,000 attendees began to applaud those heckling Governor Scott about Common Core.

Please watch Governor Scott’s remarks at the AFP summit. At 15:30 minutes into his talk he mentions education, at that point the heckling against Common Core began:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/id-BiBOa5Ho[/youtube]

On January 20, 2014 the Republican Party of Duval County Voted unanimously to Oppose Common Core Education Standards. Here is the official statement and video of event:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iapEzJ0m2VQ&feature=share&list=UUjs_N1FOYdTbwnAvTn4_pGw&index=1[/youtube]

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5 Horrific Examples of Cultural Decay in America

Florida considering adoption of national “sexuality” education standards

Republican support for Common Core crumbles

Common Core: What’s behind Arne Duncan’s Race Card?

A stated goal of Common Core has been closing “the achievement gap” that exists largely between inner-city and suburban schools, and white and minority students. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan let slip a key aim: equalizing educational outcomes by redefining proficiency. Objective measurements as traditional letter grades A through F are also being abandoned.

During a November speech, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan claimed that opposition to the “Common Core State Standards” was coming from “white, suburban moms” upset because their children were no longer as “brilliant” and their schools no longer as “good” as they thought they were.

Duncan’s statement increased pushback to Common Core and its unconstitutional mandated “standards” for math and English Language Arts, national testing, and data tracking of students and teachers. Michelle Malkin, calling herself a “brown, suburban mom,” swung back in a column. A group called MAD, Moms against Duncan, gathered 2,000 members in two days.

The Secretary of Education was blaming their children for being confused by math assignments that involve byzantine drawings and narratives, complicating straightforward math problems. Students who mastered the math got no or only partial credit, but those who had only a partial grasp could get credit for explanations and drawings. Algebra has moved from eighth grade to ninth. Conversely, younger students are asked to do developmentally inappropriate tasks, like “collaborate.” And “informational texts” replace much of the literary reading.

Duncan’s “apology,” issued the following Monday as a blog post titled, “High standards for All Schools and Students, Everywhere,” only admitted that he had used “some clumsy phrasing.” In fact, Duncan doubled down on his original point. He again attributed the drops in scores to “a result of a more realistic assessment of students’ knowledge and skills”—in other words, to students’ shortcomings that earlier tests were incapable of discerning. He redeployed the sales pitches of “higher standards,” widely supported by teachers (through unspecified “surveys”) and “leaders from both sides of the aisle.”

Claiming “Other countries are rapidly passing us by in preparing their students,” Duncan disingenuously turned his original statement around by saying, “we want more for all students.

A stated goal of Common Core has been closing “the achievement gap” that exists largely between inner-city and suburban schools, and white and minority students. Duncan let slip a key aim: equalizing educational outcomes by redefining proficiency.

Academic measurements through assessments and grades are being changed. Eliminating competition through objective standards has been the career goal of radical educators, the most famous perhaps, Bill Ayers.

Bill Ayers does not have an official post in the Department of Education, but his close colleague, Stanford Education Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, does. After serving as head of Obama’s education transition team, she was put in charge of developing one of the two national Common Core tests.

While Ayers rails wildly against testing, recalling the school-as-prison metaphor from his Weatherman days, Darling-Hammond is more circumspect. In journal articles she has expressed goals that align with the stated goal of “closing the achievement gap” posted on the 2008 Obama-Biden campaign site. In the Summer 2009Harvard Educational Review, she heralded the Obama administration’s “opportunity to transform our nation’s schools.” What drew her to the Obama campaign, she wrote, was, “a sincerity and a depth of commitment to education, a genuine concern for improving the quality of teaching and learning, an intolerance of a status quo that promotes inequality, and a drive to move our education system into the twenty-first century—not only in math, science, and technology but also in developing creativity, critical thinking skills, and the capacity to innovate—a much needed change from the narrow views of the last eight years” (emphases added).

She reasserted her commitment to such “creative” attributes in the April 28, 2010, issue of Education Week, promising that her new “balanced assessment system” would go “beyond recall of facts and show students’ abilities to evaluate evidence, problem solve and understand contexts.” Importantly, this new testing would serve to end “inequality.”

Darling-Hammond’s definition of “inequality” is radical: it means outcomes, not just opportunity. In a December 2008 Phi Delta Kappan article, “Assessment for Learning Around the World,” she wrote, “The integration of curriculum, assessment, and instruction in a well-developed teaching and learning system creates the foundation for much more equitable and productive outcomes.”

The questions released by Darling-Hammond’s group, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, attempt to assess the elusive “creativity, critical thinking skills, and the capacity to innovate” that she named in her Harvard Education Review article. The sample questions were empty of content and provided much opportunity forsubjective grading.

Darling-Hammond’s model follows those of five California high schools that she and Diane Friedlander described in an article for the May 2008 issue of Educational Leadership, “Creating Excellent and Equitable Schools.” In it, Darling-Hammond castigates high schools that track and place students on academic scales as based on “the 20th-century factory model.” In contrast, the June Jordan School for Equity employs “a project-based college preparatory curriculum infused with social-justice and civic-engagement themes,” relying on community-service internships and work portfolios. Leadership High School similarly “focuses on creating community leaders”; portfolios and projects ensure “equitable outcomes for all students.”

In a 2010 article liberally citing Ayers heroes, John Dewey, Maxine Greene, and Paulo Freire, “Documentation and Democratic Education,” co-written with Beverly Falk, Darling-Hammond promoted similar “documentary practices” that help “students to understand themselves and each other, both as learners and as members of a collective community” (Theory Into Practice). Invoking Marxist Paulo Freire’s “pedagogy for empowerment,” described in Teachers as cultural workers, Darling-Hammond and Falk urge teachers to “truly see students” by learning “to look and listen carefully and non-judgmentally. . . .”

Under this model, the teacher is a “facilitator” helping students to develop and answer their own questions, and “ultimately, manage and guide their own learning” based on everyday events. This kind of teaching emphasizes “looking and listening rather than quizzing and telling.” Such “documentary” assessments require teachers to record students’ bursts of creativity, insights, or problems.

But the results of such alternative assessments have been disastrous, when measured by current standards. The 2010 statistics for the June Jordan School for Social Equity, one of the five schools noted in Darling-Hammond’s Educational Leadership article, are damning. The enrollment stood at only 194, but the city-data.com school rating for test scores gave it a 7, out of a possible 100 in 2010. That year, the school did even not meet the Adequate Yearly Progress Report and had not met AYP since 2005. The “equitable outcomes” have been across the bottom.

The recent downward spiral with Common Core assessments, especially in New York State, seems to indicate a trend in the same direction. Secretary Duncan claimed that plummeting scores were an indication of “a more realistic assessment of students’ knowledge and skills.” But what does Duncan mean by “realistic assessments”?

On April 30, at the annual American Educational Research Association (AERA) meeting (with Darling-Hammond and Bill Ayers listed as participants), Duncan promised that the new assessments would diagnose problems and would measure “non-cognitive skills.” In other words, students’ attitudes and behaviors would be monitored. The measurement of such “soft skills” through psychologically invasive means has raised alarms.

Objective measurements as traditional letter grades A through F are also being abandoned.

Joan Tornow, Ph.D., a “Federal Way-based curriculum specialist” in a blog post announced that “As we adapt to the Common Core, our traditional grading system of A-F is on the chopping block, and rightfully so.” Defying logic – or standard word definitions – she writes, “Our A-F grading system has been built on the assumption that it is natural for only a certain percentage of students to excel.” For Tornow, it seems that all students should excel, and they will under Common Core’s “Standards-based education (SBE).”

According to Tornow, with SBE, “students are not ranked against their classmates—or sorted like so many potatoes or apples. Rather, students are evaluated in terms of progress towards objective standards.” The word “objective” too is redefined – to mean having each student “achieve his or her potential.” Tornow calls standards-based education “part of a national vision in which education is more democratic and effective.”

In an interview on NPR recently, Alissa Peltzman, vice president for state policy for Achieve, the well-connected nonprofit that put together Common Core, noted that many districts across the country were moving to standards-based grading. Brian Stack, a New Hampshire principal, described the new system at his high school as consisting of E, M, IP, LP, NM, NYC (not yet competent), and IWC (insufficient work shown).

At a New Hampshire elementary school, a four-point scale is used, with numbers being assigned for various abilities like skills, homework, participation, and paying attention. The principal maintains that the new system has the advantage of being able to point out a bad work ethic, even when the student is getting a good grade.

One thinks back to Duncan’s promise to measure “non-cognitive skills.” Is this a way to help ease grade disparities, to award points for behavior?

Indeed, the Common Core standards themselves reward behavior – but conformist behavior. “Literacy” skills require students grades 3 through 8 to: “Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on [appropriate grade] topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.” The criteria are similar for high school.

Reward for such collective behavior is part of the new assessment strategy. Bill Ayers complains about schools “sorting” students, and so do less notorious educators working in and with the Obama administration’s Department of Education. Ensuring “equality of outcome,” however, is not the answer.

RELATED COLUMN: Obama DOJ’s Message To Schools: Singling Out Blacks For Poor Behavior Is ‘Racist’

Common Core scandal: Medical and disciplinary reports on children hacked

As the Florida Department of Education, Governor Rick Scott, former Governor Jeb Bush and key Florida legislators move forward to implement Common Core State Standards in the sunshine state a database in Long Island’s Sachem School District is compromised.

Nancy Smith from Sunshine State News reports, “On Long Island earlier this month a hacker apparently was able to access records in the Sachem School District and leak personal student data to a web forum. The records included medical and disciplinary reports.” According to The Journal News, in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam counties, N.Y., the database uploads to Web Cloud run by inBloom, a nonprofit group funded by the Gates Foundation and supported by Amazon.

“Surprisingly, the breach didn’t come as a great shock to the community. Even before it transpired, parents and teachers were concerned about data collection and the potential of sharing it or stealing it,” writes Smith.  Also reported in The Journal News, “More than 20 districts in the Lower Hudson Valley have pulled out of New York’s participation in the federal Race to the Top initiative, hoping that doing so will allow them to withhold certain data. Since the state has said that this strategy will not work, districts are now writing to inBloom directly and requesting that their student records be deleted.”

Governor Scott has raised concerns about the data mining portion of Common Core but has not supported legislation to either delay or stop its implementation in Florida. Florida Representative Debbie Mayfield (R-FL District 54) has introduced HB 25 to delay implementation until the costs and impact of Common Core can be determined.

Dr. Karen Effrem, President of Education Liberty Watch.

Dr. Karen Effrem, President of Education Liberty Watch and a co-founder of the Florida Stop Common Core Coalition, and Randy Osborne, Director of Education for Heartland Research and the Florida Eagle Forum, did a Policy Analysis of Common Core in Florida. Effrem and Osborne state, “The Common Core standards, along with the aligned curriculum and the mining of nearly 400 data points reveal that the goal of the standards is not simply to improve academic achievement but also to instill federally determined attitudes and mindsets in students including political and religious beliefs. According to the US Department of Education, this will be carefully regulated through the extensive data-mining of both students and teachers using devices such as ‘facial expression cameras,’ ‘posture analysis seats,’ ‘a pressure mouse,’ and ‘wireless skin conductance sensors’ as well as the use of the actual assessments. The federal government asserts that to secure their definition of improving the quality of education, a student’s right to privacy may be sacrificed.”

Commenting on the Sachem School District data compromise Effrem states, “A number of standards will be used for the psychological training of children starting at a young age … One of the main goals for uniform national assessments is for the federal government to have access to highly personal individual student data. It isn’t just teachers and school officials who can request and get students’ records. It’s also ‘a contractor, consultant, volunteer, or other party to whom an agency or institution has outsourced institutional services or functions … Common Core completely strips the child of privacy.”

Dr. Effrem writes, “The utter failure of proponents of Common Core to make rational arguments about this imposed system of inferior, psychosocial workforce training standards, national tests and data collection has stimulated them to lash out to mock and marginalize anyone who opposes it. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has joined former Governor Jeb Bush and Senate President Don Gaetz in now bipartisan sneering derision of parental and citizen concerns. Duncan created a firestorm on Friday (11/15) with his mocking, racist attack on mothers that oppose Common Core: ‘It’s fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were, and that’s pretty scary. You’ve bet your house and where you live and everything on, ‘My child’s going to be prepared.’ That can be a punch in the gut.'” Duncan has since issued an apology for his remarks.

A new Facebook group, Moms Against Duncan (MAD), has almost 1600 members since then and the comments on Twitter have been overwhelmingly critical. Conservative columnists and liberal moms have joined together in righteous anger against these thoughtless remarks.

History tells us the larger the Common Core database becomes the more likely it will be target by those who would do children harm. Will Governor Scott and the proponents of Common Core listen to moms and take heed? Time will tell.

RELATED DOCUMENTS:

Comments on the Psychological and Developmental Aspects of the Florida’s Common Core Standards by Dr. Karen Effrem – Download PDF

Comments on Florida ELA Common Core Standards by Dr. Sandra Stotsky – Download PDF

Comments on FL Math Common Core Standards by Ze’ev Wurman – Download PDF

132 Catholic Professors take “Extraordinary Step” of asking all Bishops to Stop Common Core

One hundred thirty-two Catholic Professors have taken “the extraordinary step” of signing a letter that asks all Catholic Bishops to stand up and firmly oppose Common Core. The letter states, “[W]e are convinced that Common Core is so deeply flawed that it should not be adopted by Catholic schools which have yet to approve it, and that those schools which have already endorsed it should seek an orderly withdrawal now.”

The letter states, “Sadly, over one hundred Catholic dioceses have set aside our teaching tradition in favor of these secular standards. Common Core adopts a bottom-line, pragmatic approach to education. The heart of its philosophy is, as far as we can see, that it is a waste of resources to ‘over-educate’ people.”

The letter notes that, “[N]otwithstanding the good intentions of those who made these decisions, Common Core was approved too hastily and with inadequate consideration of how it would change the character and curriculum of our nation’s Catholic schools. We believe that implementing Common Core would be a grave disservice to Catholic education in America.”

The below letter was sent to each Catholic bishop in the United States. At the end are the names of the 132 Catholic professors who signed the letter.

Gerard V. Bradley, Professor of Law
c/o University of Notre Dame, The Law School
3156 Eck Hall of Law, PO Box 780
Notre Dame, IN 46556

October 16, 2013

Your Excellency:

We are Catholic scholars who have taught for years in America’s colleges and universities. Most of us have done so for decades. A few of us have completed our time in the classroom; we are professors “emeriti.” We have all tried throughout our careers to put our intellectual gifts at the service of Christ and His Church. Most of us are parents, too, who have seen to our children’s education, much of it in Catholic schools. We are all personally and professionally devoted to Catholic education in America.

For these reasons we take this extraordinary step of addressing each of America’s Catholic bishops about the “Common Core” national reform of K-12 schooling. Over one hundred dioceses and archdioceses have decided since 2010 to implement the Common Core. We believe that, notwithstanding the good intentions of those who made these decisions, Common Core was approved too hastily and with inadequate consideration of how it would change the character and curriculum of our nation’s Catholic schools. We believe that implementing Common Core would be a grave disservice to Catholic education in America.

In fact, we are convinced that Common Core is so deeply flawed that it should not be adopted by Catholic schools which have yet to approve it, and that those schools which have already endorsed it should seek an orderly withdrawal now.

Why – upon what evidence and reasoning – do we take such a decisive stand against a reform that so many Catholic educators have endorsed, or at least have acquiesced in? In this brief letter we can only summarize our evidence and sketch our reasoning. We stand ready, however, to develop these brief points as you wish. We also invite you to view the video recording of a comprehensive conference critically examining Common Core, held at the University of Notre Dame on September 9, 2013. (For a copy of the video, please contact Professor Gerard Bradley at the address above.)

News reports each day show that a lively national debate about Common Core is upon us. The early rush to adopt Common Core has been displaced by sober second looks,and widespread regrets. Several states have decided to “pause” implementation. Others have opted out of the testing consortia associated with Common Core. Prominent educators and political leaders have declared their opposition. The national momentum behind Common Core has, quite simply, stopped. A wave of reform which recently was thought to be inevitable now isn’t. Parents of K- 12 children are leading today’s resistance to the Common Core. A great number of these parents are Catholics whose children attend Catholic schools.

Much of today’s vigorous debate focuses upon particular standards in English and math. Supporters say that Common Core will “raise academic standards.” But we find persuasive the critiques of educational experts (such as James Milgram, professor emeritus of mathematics at Stanford University, and Sandra Stotsky, professor emerita of education at the University of Arkansas) who have studied Common Core, and who judge it to be a step backwards. We endorse their judgment that this “reform” is really a radical shift in emphasis, goals, and expectations for K-12 education, with the result that Common Core-educated children will not be prepared to do authentic college work. Even supporters of Common Core admit that it is geared to prepare children only for community-college-level studies.

No doubt many of America’s Catholic children will study in community colleges. Some will not attend college at all. This is not by itself lamentable; it all depends upon the personal vocations of those children, and what they need to learn and do in order to carry out the unique set of good works entrusted to them by Jesus. But none of that means that our Catholic grade schools and high schools should give up on maximizing the intellectual potential of every student. And every student deserves to be prepared for a life of the imagination, of the spirit, and of a deep appreciation for beauty, goodness, truth, and faith.

The judgments of Stotsky and Milgram (among many others) are supported by a host of particulars. These particulars include when algebra is to be taught, whether advanced mathematics coursework should be taught in high school, the misalignment of writing and reading standards, and whether cursive writing is to be taught. We do not write to you, however, to start an argument about particulars. At least, that is a discussion for another occasion and venue. We write to you instead because of what the particular deficiencies of Common Core reveal about the philosophy and the basic aims of the reform. We write to you because we think that this philosophy and these aims will undermine Catholic education, and dramatically diminish our children’s horizons.

Promoters of Common Core say that it is designed to make America’s children “college and career ready.” We instead judge Common Core to be a recipe for standardized workforce preparation. Common Core shortchanges the central goals of all sound education and surely those of Catholic education: to grow in the virtues necessary to know, love, and serve the Lord, to mature into a responsible, flourishing adult, and to contribute as a citizen to the process of responsible democratic self-government. Common Core adopts a bottom-line, pragmatic approach to education. The heart of its philosophy is, as far as we can see, that it is a waste of resources to “over-educate” people. The basic goal of K-12 schools is to provide everyone with a modest skill set; after that, people can specialize in college – if they end up there. Truck-drivers do not need to know Huck Finn. Physicians have no use for the humanities. Only those destined to major in literature need to worry about Ulysses.

Perhaps a truck-driver needs no acquaintance with Paradise Lost to do his or her day’s work. But everyone is better off knowing Shakespeare and Euclidean geometry, and everyone is capable of it. Everyone bears the responsibility of growing in wisdom and grace and in deliberating with fellow-citizens about how we should all live together. A sound education helps each of us to do so.

The sad facts about Common Core are most visible in its reduction in the study of classic, narrative fiction in favor of “informational texts.” This is a dramatic change. It is contrary to tradition and academic studies on reading and human formation. Proponents of Common Core do not disguise their intention to transform “literacy” into a “critical” skill set, at the expense of sustained and heartfelt encounters with great works of literature.

Professor Stotsky was the chief architect of the universally-praised Massachusetts English language arts standards, which contributed greatly to that state’s educational success. She describes Common Core as an incubator of “empty skill sets . . . [that] weaken the basis of literary and cultural knowledge needed for authentic college coursework.” Rather than explore the creativity of man, the great lessons of life, tragedy, love, good and evil, the rich textures of history that underlie great works of fiction, and the tales of self-sacrifice and mercy in the works of the great writers that have shaped our cultural literacy over the centuries, Common Core reduces reading to a servile activity.

Professor Anthony Esolen, now at Providence College, has taught literature and poetry to college students for two decades. He provided testimony to a South Carolina legislative committee on the Common Core, lamenting its “cavalier contempt for great works of human art and thought, in literary form.” He further declared: “We are not programming machines. We are teaching children. We are not producing functionaries, factory-like. We are to be forming the minds and hearts of men and women.”

Thus far Common Core standards have been published for mathematics and English language arts. Related science standards have been recently released by Achieve, Inc. History standards have also been prepared by another organization. No diocese (for that matter, no state) is bound to implement these standards just by dint of having signed onto Common Core’s English and math standards. We nonetheless believe that the same financial inducements, political pressure, and misguided reforming zeal that rushed those standards towards acceptance will conspire to make acceptance of the history and science standards equally speedy – and unreflective and unfortunate.

These new standards will very likely lower expectations for students, just as the Common Core math and English standards have done. More important, however, is the likelihood that they will promote the prevailing philosophical orthodoxies in those disciplines. In science, the new standards are likely to take for granted, and inculcate students into a materialist metaphysics that is incompatible with, the spiritual realities –soul, conceptual thought, values, free choice, God– which Catholic faith presupposes.

We fear, too, that the history standards will promote the easy moral relativism, tinged with a pervasive anti-religious bias, that is commonplace in collegiate history departments today.

Common Core is innocent of America’s Catholic schools’ rich tradition of helping to form children’s hearts and minds. In that tradition, education brings children to the Word of God. It provides students with a sound foundation of knowledge and sharpens their faculties of reason. It nurtures the child’s natural openness to truth and beauty, his moral goodness, and his longing for the infinite and happiness. It equips students to understand the laws of nature and to recognize the face of God in their fellow man.

Education in this tradition forms men and women capable of discerning and pursuing their path in life and who stand ready to defend truth, their church, their families, and their country.

The history of Catholic education is rich in tradition and excellence. It embraces the academic inheritance of St. Anselm, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Blessed John Henry Newman. In contrast to such academic rigor, the Common Core standards lack an empirical evidentiary basis and have not been field-tested anywhere. Sadly, over one hundred Catholic dioceses have set aside our teaching tradition in favor of these secular standards.

America’s bishops have compiled a remarkable record of success directing Catholic education in America, perhaps most notably St. John Neumann and the Plenary
Councils of Baltimore. Parents embrace that tradition and long for adherence to it – indeed, for its renaissance. That longing reflects itself in the growing Catholic homeschool and classical-education movements and, now, in the burgeoning desire among Catholic parents for their dioceses to reject the Common Core.
Because we believe that this moment in history again calls for the intercession of each bishop, we have been made bold to impose upon your time with our judgments of Common Core.

Faithfully in Christ, we are:

Institutional Affiliations Are for Identification Purposes Only

Gerard Bradley
Professor of Law
University of Notre Dame

Robert P. George
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence
Princeton University

Anthony M. Esolen
Professor of English
Providence College

Anne Hendershott
Professor of Sociology
Franciscan University of Steubenville

Kevin Doak
Professor
Georgetown University

Joseph A. Varacalli
S.U.N.Y. Distinguished Service Professor
Nassau Community College-S.U.N.Y.

Patrick McKinley Brennan
John F. Scarpa Chair in Catholic Legal Studies
Villanova University School of Law

Robert Fastiggi, Ph.D.
Professor of Systematic Theology
Detroit, MI

Duncan Stroik
Professor of Architecture
University of Notre Dame

Thomas F. Farr
Director, Religious Freedom Project and
Visiting Associate Professor
Georgetown University

Matthew J. Franck, Ph.D.
Director, Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution
Witherspoon Institute

Ronald J. Rychlak
Butler Snow Lecturer and Professor of Law
University of Mississippi, School of Law

V. Bradley Lewis
Associate Professor of Philosophy
The Catholic University of America

Patrick J. Deneen
David A. Potenziani Memorial Associate
Professor of Political Science
University of Notre Dame

E. Christian Brugger, D.Phil.
J. Francis Cardinal Stafford Professor of Moral Theology
Saint John Vianney Theological Seminary, Denver

Kenneth L. Grasso
Professor of Political Science
Texas State University

James Hitchcock
Professor of History
Saint Louis University
Maria Sophia Aguirre, Ph.D.
Director of Economics Programs and Academic Chair
The Catholic University of America

Fr. Joseph Koterski SJ
President, Fellowship of Catholic Scholars
Fordham University

Francis J. Beckwith
Professor of Philosophy and Church-State Studies
Baylor University

Thomas V. Svogun
Professor of Philosophy and Administration
of Justice and Chairman of the Department of Philosophy
Salve Regina University

Scott W Hahn
Professor of Theology
Franciscan University of Steubenville
Eduardo J. Echeverria, Ph.D., S.T.L.
Professor of Philosophy and Systematic Theology
Sacred Heart Major Seminary

Ryan J. Barilleaux, Ph.D.
Paul Rejai Professor of Political Science
Miami University (Ohio)

Brian Simboli, Ph.D.
Science Librarian
Lehigh University

John A. Gueguen
Emeritus Professor, Political Philosophy
Illinois State University

G. Alexander Ross
Institute for the Psychological Sciences

Suzanne Carpenter, Ph.D., R.N.
Associate Professor of Nursing
Retired

Patrick Lee
McAleer Professor of Bioethics
Franciscan University of Steubenville

Peter J. Colosi, PhD
Associate Professor of Moral Theology
St. Charles Borromeo Seminary

Dr. Robert Hunt
Professor of Political Science
Kean University

Matthew Cuddeback, PhD
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Providence College

Dr. Joseph H. Hagan
President Emeritus
Assumption College

John A. Cuddeback, PhD
Professor of Philosophy
Christendom College

Dr. Michael J. Healy
Professor and Chair of Philosophy
Franciscan University of Steubenville

Thomas Hibbs
Dean of the Honors College
Baylor University

Susan Orr Traffas
Co-Director, Honors Program
Benedictine College

Michael J. Behe
Professor of Biological Sciences
Lehigh University

Thomas R. Rourke
Professor of Politics
Clarion University

Robert H Holden
Professor, Dept. of History
Old Dominion University

Philip J. Harold
Associate Dean, School of Education and
Social Sciences
Robert Morris University

David T. Murphy, Ph.D.
Dept. of Modern & Classical Languages
Saint Louis University

W. H. Marshner
Professor of Theology
Christendom College

David W. Fagerberg
Associate Professor, Theology
University of Notre Dame

Melissa Moschella
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Catholic University of America

Daniel J. Costello, Jr.
Bettex Professor of Electrical Engineering,
Emeritus
University of Notre Dame

Brian Scarnecchia,
Associate Professor of Law
Ave Maria School of Law

Thomas Behr
Assistant Professor of Comparative Cultural
Studies
University of Houston

Bernard Dobranski
Dean Emeritus and Professor of Law
Ave Maria School of Law

Daniel Philpott
Professor, Political Science and Peace Studies
University of Notre Dame

Anne Barbeau Gardiner
Professor emerita, Dept of English
John Jay College, CUNY

C.C. Pecknold
Assistant Professor of Theology
The Catholic University of America

Anthony Low
Professor Emeritus of English
New York University

Heather Voccola
Adjunct Professor of Church History
Holy Apostles College and Seminary

Raymond F. Hain, PhD
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Providence College

Catherine Abbott
Professor of Mathematics
Keuka College

Thérèse Bonin
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Duquesne University

Dr. Francis P. Kessler
Prof. Political Science
Benedictine College

Christopher Wolfe
Co-Director, Thomas International Center
Emeritus Professor, Marquette University

Carson Holloway
Associate Professor of Political Science
University of Nebraska at Omaha

Stephen M. Krason, J.D., Ph.D.
President
Society of Catholic Social Scientists

Laura Hirschfeld Hollis
Associate Professional Specialist and
Concurrent Associate Professor of Law
University of Notre Dame

Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C.,
Professor of History
University of Notre Dame

Stephen M. Barr
Professor of Physics
University of Delaware

D.C. Schindler
Associate Professor of Metaphysics and Anthropology
The John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family

Jeanne Heffernan Schindler
Senior Research Fellow
Center for Cultural and Pastoral Concerns

David L. Schindler
Gagnon Professor of Fundamental Theology
Pontifical John Paul II Institute, Catholic University of America

Rev. Edward Krause, C.C.C.
Professor of Social Sciences, Emeritus
Gannon University

Christopher O. Tollefsen
Professor of Philosophy
University of South Carolina

Paige E. Hochschild
Assistant Professor of Theology
Mount St. Mary’s University

Robert C. Jeffrey
Professor of Government
Wofford College

Rev. Anthony E. Giampietro, CSB
Executive Vice President and Academic Dean
Saint Patrick’s Seminary & University

Dr. Roger Loucks
Associate Prof. of Physics
Alfred University

J. Daniel Hammond
Professor of Economics
Wake Forest University

Kenneth R. Hoffmann, Ph.D.
Professor of Neurosurgery
SUNY at Buffalo

Timothy T. O’Donnell, STD, KGCHS
President Christendom College

Thomas W. Jodziewicz
Department of History
University of Dallas

Sr J. Sheila Galligan IHM
Professor of Theology
Immaculata University

Maura Hearden
Assistant Professor of Theology
DeSales University

Robert Gorman
University Distinguished Professor of
Political Science
Texas State University

Steven Justice
Professor of English
University of California, Berkeley and University of Mississippi

Carol Nevin (Sue) Abromaitis
Professor of English
Loyola University Maryland

Dr. Sean Innerst
Theology Cycle Director,
St. John Vianney Theological Seminary

Robert A. Destro
Professor of Law & Director
The Catholic University of America

Richard Sherlock
Prof. of Philosophy
Utah State University

Adrian J. Reimers
Adjunct Assistant Professor in Philosophy
University of Notre Dame

Dr. Jessica M. Murdoch
Assistant Professor of Fundamental and Dogmatic Theology
Villanova University

Mary Shivanandan, S.T.L., S.T.D.
Professor of Theology Retired
John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at
The Catholic University of America

Alice M. Ramos
Professor of Philosophy
St. John’s University

Dennis J. Marshall, Ph.D.
Professor of Theology
Aquinas College

Dennis D. Martin
Associate Professor of Theology
Loyola University Chicago

Janet E. Smith
Father Michael J. McGivney Chair of Life Ethics
Sacred Heart Major Seminary

Leonard J. Nelson,III
Retired Professor of Law
Samford University

Charles D. Presberg, PhD
Associate Professor of Spanish
University of Missouri-Columbia

Brian T. Kelly
Dean
Thomas Aquinas College

Michael F. McLean
President
Thomas Aquinas College

Philip T. Crotty
Professor of Management (Emeritus)
Northeastern University

James Matthew Wilson
Assistant Professor of Literature
Villanova University

R. E. Houser
Bishop Wendelin J. Nold Chair in Graduate Philosophy
University of St. Thomas (TX)

Gary D. Glenn
Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus
Department of Political Science, Northern Illinois University

Cynthia Toolin, Ph.D.
Professor of Dogmatic and Moral Theology
Holy Apostles College and Seminary

Virginia L. Arbery, Ph. D.
Associate Professor of Humanities
Wyoming Catholic College

Maryanne M. Linkes, Esquire
Adjunct Professor
University of Pittsburgh & Community
College of Allegheny County

James Likoudis, M.S.Ed.
Education writer
Montour Falls, NY 14865

Dr. Emil Berendt
Assistant Professor of Economics
Mount St. Mary’s University

David F. Forte
Professor of Law
Cleveland State University

Anthony W. Zumpetta, Ed.D.
Professor Emeritus
West Chester University (PA)

Thomas D. Watts
Professor Emeritus
University of Texas, Arlington

Catherine Ruth Pakaluk, PhD
Assistant Professor of Economics
Ave Maria University

Craig S. Lent
Freimann Professor of Electrical Engineering
University of Notre Dame

Christina Jeffrey, Ph.D.
Lecturer on the Foundations of American Government
Wofford College

Robert G Kennedy
Professor of Catholic Studies
University of St Thomas (MN)

Holly Taylor Coolman
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Theology
Providence College

Raymond F. Hain, PhD
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Providence College

David Whalen
Provost
Hillsdale College

David M. Wagner
Professor of Law
Regent University School of Law

John G. Trapani, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy
Walsh University

Tina Holland, Ph.D.
South Bend, Indiana

James F. Papillo, J.D., Ph.D
Former Vice President of Administrative
Affairs and Associate Professor in the Humanities
Holy Apostles College and Seminary

Dr. J. Marianne Siegmund
Theo. Department and SCSS member
University of Dallas

Dr. Daniel Hauser
Professor of Theology
University of St. Francis

Joshua Hochschild
Mount St. Mary’s University

William Edmund Fahey, Ph.D.
Fellow and President
The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts

John C. McCarthy
Dean, School of Philosophy
The Catholic University of America

Christopher O. Blum
Academic Dean
Augustine Institute

Chiyuma Elliott
Assistant Professor of English and African-American Studies
University of Mississippi

Mark C. Henrie
Senior V.P., Chief Academic Officer
Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Jeffrey Tranzillo, Ph.D.
Professor, Systematic Theology

Craig Steven Titus, S.Th.D/Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Director of Integrative Studies
Institute of the Psychological Sciences

Rev. Peter M.J. Stravinskas, Ph.D., S.T.D.
Executive Director
Catholic Education Foundation

William W. Kirk
Vice President for Student Affairs and General Counsel
Ave Maria University

Curt H. Stiles, Ph.D.
Professor of Business Policy
Cameron School of Business
University of North Carolina

Did the Florida Commissioner of Education lie about the cost to implement Common Core?

A question was posed to Pam Stewart, interim Florida Education Commissioner, during public hearings on Common Core State Standards at a public meeting in Tampa, FL.

The question posed by a parent was: Has any cost analysis been done on Common Core – what will it cost taxpayers?

Commissioner Stewart answered “It will cost nothing.”

Brenda Pastorick, who attended the Tampa, FL meeting, states, “Of course, there was loud applause. Now, is she that naive? Or, if she lied about this to the general public, what other lies are being told by the Florida Department of Education with regards to Common Core. We certainly don’t want liars dictating policy over the education of our children here in Florida, do we?”

The Florida Coalition to Stop Common Core issued a report on implementation in the sunshine state. Chapter 6 is on “The Cost to Implement Common Core Standards.” According to the report:

Based on data from several sources, the Common Core standards and accompanying tests will be very expensive – both to implement and to maintain.

Florida is projected by the Pioneer Institute to spend $1,024,163,000 to pay for testing, technology, textbooks, and professional development in what they characterize as a “middle of the road” estimate compared to $905,838,000 in grants received, leaving at least $118,325,000 in costs to Florida taxpayers just for implementation.

Given that former Commissioner Bennett and the State Board of Education (SBOE) originally asked for $442 million in one year to implement assessments, which is more than what Florida has already spent on the FCAT between 1996 and 2008 combined, that $118 million amount might well be low and will serve as a huge unfunded mandate to already strapped county districts. Marion County has had to lay off 160 teachers, and Charlotte County was forced to discontinue physical education classes until parental outrage and funding shifts reversed that decision as costs for Common Core implementation continue to mount.

Even more concerning is that Bennett changed his education budget request to $100 million in the middle of the legislative session. This constitutes a $342 million swing, indicates enormous credibility problems, and appears to be an effort to hide the true costs of this capaciously expensive system. In addition, the commissioner later said that Florida may consider some other completely different testing scheme at an unknown cost, even though Florida is the fiscal agent for PARCC.

Read the full report here.

According to Pastorick, “Just to let you know the hearing on Common Core last night in Tampa was well attended, but with only one member of the FL Board of Education, John Cologne, present. He left early and did not even hear me and I was #26 speaker. Hillsborough County had an unending number of teachers, etc. praising the results they are having in their classrooms using Common Core – one even broke up in tears because her daughter who has always had trouble reading is now reading and excelling under Common Core.  It was evident that the words of the two experts, Dr. Sandra Stotsky (English) and Ze’ve Wurman (Math) probably fell on deaf ears with the advocates of CC – credentials attached – each was allowed 15 minutes at the beginning of the hearing.”

There have been concerns that advocates would be given more time to speak than opponents.

Chrissy Blevio from the Florida Stop Common Core Coalition (FLCC) wrote in an email, “Dear FLCC Fighters, Please do your best to get to the remaining two hearings. Our opinion, after sitting in on the FDOE meetings in Tampa and the public hearing, is that the FDOE has no intentions to consider dropping Common Core but only to change the name or ‘rebrand.’ It’s the old ‘bait and switch’ routine.”

Florida parents cannot “opt out” of Common Core data mining

Florida Governor Rick Scott has voiced concern about the student data mining component of Common Core State Standards. When asked if he supported the data mining aspect of Common Core, Scott answered “no” to the question. Public hearings were held this week across Florida to hear the concerns with Common Core by teachers, parents and concerned citizens.

According to Diane Kepus, The National Education Data Model (NEDM), available online, lists hundreds of data points considered indispensable to the nationalized student tracking racket. These include:

  • “Bus Stop Arrival Time” and “Bus Stop Description”
  • “Dwelling arrangement”
  • “Diseases, Illnesses and Other Health Conditions”
  • “Religious Affiliation”
  • “Telephone Number Type” and “Telephone Status”

It now appears that Florida is one of the states that, according to the Florida Department of Education, parents cannot “opt out” of providing private information to the companies running the data mining system. A parent provided the below letter reply to the possibility to “opt out” for their child.

red-and-yellow-florida-letter

For a larger view click on the image.

The What is Common Core blog states, “So, [Andre Smith] the ‘Bureau Chief’ of the PK20 Florida Data Warehouse informed the Florida parent that he was ‘unable to identify opt out provisions to PK2O Education Data Warehouse.’ That’s right: unable to identify an opt out provision. Parents like me are unable to identify any constitutional provision whereby parents might be ethically overridden so that a federal-state partnership could then track personally identifiable information about our children without our parental consent in a federally promoted and funded State Longitudinal Database System!”

According to the Florida Department of Education PK20 Florida Data Warehouse website, “The mission of the Florida K-20 Education Data Warehouse (EDW) is to provide stakeholders in public education-including, but not limited to, administrators, educators, parents, students, state leadership, and professional organizations-with the capability of receiving timely, efficient, consistent responses to inquiries into Florida’s Kindergarten through University education.”

The Chairman of the US House Education Committee Representative John Kline in letter dated February 2010 to Arne Duncan stated his concerns and dismay that grant awards were to be based “in part on the willingness of the states to expand their statewide longitudinal data systems that would include a broad swath of student information”. Kline quotes Duncan as stating data collection was part of the “cradle to career agenda”.

The following outlines the Common Core data requirements and uses:

Click on image for a larger view.

An open letter to Governor Scott on Common Core

Parents, teachers and concerned citizens sent an “Open Letter” to Governor Rick Scott by Chris Quackenbush, Co-founder StopCommonCoreFL.com, on the eve of hearings being held in three locations in the state on the implementation of Common Core State Standards in Florida. The open letter is provided in its entirety below.

10/11/13

Open letter to Governor Scott

Subject:  Common Core Hearings Oct 15, 16 and 17

Dear Governor Scott,

October 15th, private citizens are bringing two of the best experts on education standards to testify on Florida’s adoption of the Common Core Standards also known at the New Sunshine State Standards.  Dr. Sandra Stotsky and Ze’ev Wurman are generously providing their time to help us prevent these flawed standards from being implemented in Florida.

We have previously offered you a private meeting with these experts who wrote standards for Massachusetts, now #1, and California which is close behind.  You have not responded.  Instead, you have offered only 3 “hearings” in the entire state where parents, teachers, stake holders, or experts must drive or fly for hours and are allowed just 3 minutes to comment only on the standards themselves.

There are only 3 hours offered and your appointed State Board of Education are only accepting 60 requests to speak.  This means, with the maximum total of 3 minute, only 180 citizens in the entire state will be able to testify.  Your Commissioner of Education, Pam Stewart, was quoted saying she does not expect any changes resulting from our testimony.  Written testimony will also be accepted and likely ignored as well.

I must ask, Governor Scott, why is there so much energy expended to quell the experts, parents and teachers who are opposed to Common Core?  Why are we paying huge tax dollars to switch to a new set of national standards, Common Core, when Dr Stotsky, the author of the Massachusetts Miracle, has offered her standards used to achieve #1 in the nation for free?  To add to the mystery, why would we give up our control over Florida’s education by adopting these copyrighted national standards?

It is only reasonable that you at least listen to the experts on a matter of such great importance.  Not only does education spending comprise 25% of our state budget, but our children need our best efforts to insure they have education choices that work for them, as individuals.

Common Core Standards eliminate choice.  If all schools are tested and measured by Common Core Standards, and those standards are copyrighted and controlled by Washington DC groups, how can charter schools, religious schools, home schools and others escape?  They must teach to the test in order for their students to advance into the goal, Community College.  I say community college is the goal because Common Core Standards do not provide for curriculum required to enter institutions of higher education such as Georgia Tech or Stanford.

By moving Algebra 1 to 9th grade, students will not be able to reach calculus or trigonometry.  The experimental geometry methods in Common Core have never been tested at all.  We have what amounts to a massive experiment on 300 million children with no pilot testing whatsoever.

These concerns should make you realize that powerful interests have a great stake in our state and our country adopting Common Core, but our stakes are higher.  Our children and our future are more important and we will fight to break through the fog created by their massive PR and lobbying campaign designed to serve corporate interests over the interests of our children and our state.

We implore you to explore Florida’s options with an open mind and allow us the same access to your attention as has been provided to those corporate interests.

Sincerely,

Chris Quackenbush

Co-founder

StopCommonCoreFL.com

RELATED:

FL Governor Scott’s newest State Board of Education appointee comes under scrutiny

FL Parents & Educators Launch Executive Order to Stop Common Core 

FL Governor Scott stepping from the frying pan into the Common Core fire!

FL Parents & Educators Launch Executive Order to Stop Common Core

Florida parents, supported by parents and educators nationwide, released a Parent & Educators’ Executive Order, demanding an end to Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and its student data mining  component taking place in every state.

For a larger view click on the image.

The website Common Core Education Without Representation (CCEWR) states, “As parents, we claim the privilege of directing our children’s’ educations, free from SLDS (state longitudinal database tracking systems), free from Common Core-aligned testing, standards, or “model” curriculum; free from private trade group EIMAC/CCSSO data collection, free from federal micromanagement, free from federal “accountability”; free from the both student and teacher data mining and tracking that is offensive to individual liberty and to Constitutional, local control.”

“As parents and teachers, we claim the privilege outlined in the Declaration of Independence that government is by consent of the governed. We, the governed, have not been asked nor have we approved these unvetted standards and systems. Therefore, any governance of children or school staff under the Common Core agenda is simply invalid,” states CCEWR.

CCEWR released its Executive Order because:

The promises of the promoters of the Common Core Standards do not add up. The evidence is overwhelming, and increases daily, that the Common Core agenda damages where it claims to serve; yet those who push back against the Common Core agenda are disrespected by school boards and in hearings around the nation. This is outrageous. We are the children’s parents; children are not the government’s human capital” despite what the Department of Education repeatedly claims.

Along with the executive order, parents have issued a longer, referenced document that explains the reasoning behind the executive order. This document is entitled “Welcome to the Common Core Fuzzy Math: Common Core Equals Conditions Plus Coercion Plus Conflict of Interest.”

RELATED:

“No Common Core!” says Peter Feaman Florida Republican National Committeeman

Former Massachusetts Commissioner of Education calls for abolishing FL Department of Education

FL Governor Scott stepping from the frying pan into the Common Core fire!

Call to abolish Florida Department of Education

Sandra Stotsky, Professor Emerita, University of Alabama.

Sandra Stotsky, Ed.D., former Senior Associate Commissioner for the Massachusetts Department of Education and Professor Emerita at the University of Alabama, released a statement concerning the upcoming summit called for by Governor Rick Scott on Common Core State Standards.

Dr. Stotsky is known nationwide for her in-depth analyses of the problems in Common Core’s English language arts standards. Her current research ranges from the deficiencies in teacher preparation programs and teacher licensure tests to the deficiencies in the K-12 reading curriculum and the question of gender bias in the curriculum. She is regularly invited to testify or submit testimony to state boards of education and state legislators on bills addressing licensure tests, licensure standards, and Common Core’s standards (e.g., Utah, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Florida and Texas).

The following is the full text of Dr. Stotsky’s statement:

I have been invited by parent groups in Florida to comment on Common Core’s English language arts standards using the format that Interim Commissioner Pamela Stewart chose to give them.  Although Governor Scott requested meetings at which parents could express their concerns, she deliberately chose a method that in effect prevents discussion and an open forum.  By telling parents that they can comment only one by one, and only on the particular standards in Common Core, in a 3-hour period of time, she is in effect spitting in their faces. Parents can also send in their individual comments by computer, a method that also prevents discussion. If this is how a Department of Education treats the parents of the children whose education this Department is supposed to improve, then there is no reason for Florida parents to support the existence of such a Department. It should be abolished by referendum.

I was a senior associate commissioner in the Massachusetts Department of Education from 1999 to 2003.  At no time were critics of the Department’s draft documents treated as shabbily as Florida parents are now being treated.   Public comment was regularly allowed at Board of Education meetings, and the Department held many meetings around the state when it was developing the Bay State’s own standards. And when criticism was received on drafts of standards documents, the Department staff courteously and publicly answered these criticisms. They acted as public servants, not as bureaucrats trying to foist their own untested ideas on other people’s children.

The Massachusetts Department of Education also held a large public meeting on Common Core’s standards to which the standards writers were invited. It was informative for the audience to hear Jason Zimba, the mathematics standards writer, indicate that Common Core’s math standards would not prepare high school students for STEM. I recommend that the Florida Department of Education hold a similar meeting and invite parents and teaching faculty at its own higher education institutions to attend and question Common Core’s standards writers.

WDW – FL contributor Diane Kepus wrote, “Governor Scott recently tossed the parents and taxpayers of Florida a bone regarding implementation of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) leading many to believe he was going to “shut down” implementation of CCSS via his Executive Order Number 13-276. However some are questioning if the EO has any teeth.”

“Governor Scott issues an Executive Order and uninformed citizens believe he is stopping CCSS in Florida. What he did was withdraw Florida from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) only. He stated he was going to hold three hearings for public comments, look into finding someone else for testing and acknowledged concerns regarding the Federal overreach and the data collection of psychological attitudes and beliefs,” noted Kepus.

Kepus concluded the bottom line is: The Florida implementation of Common Core State Standards is untouched, unaffected and on track. It appears former Commissioner Stotsky has come to the same conclusion.

Florida Stop Common Core Coalition Calls Out Governor Rick Scott

Pressure is growing to stop the implementation of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in Florida. There are concerns that parents, students and citizens are being pushed aside and not listened to by those responsible for the education of Florida’s children, especially Governor Rick Scott.

George Levesque, General Counsel for the President of the Florida Senate Don Gaetz

One concern is that George Levesque, General Counsel for the President of the Florida Senate Don Gaetz, may be biased in favor of the implementation of Common Core. Levesque is the husband of Patricia Levesque, who runs the state-focused Foundation for Florida’s Future and the national Foundation for Excellence in Education, both created by former Governor Jeb Bush. Bush is pushing CCSS in Florida and nation wide.

Floridians Against Common Core Education (FACCE) has asked the governor to take a further step in cleaning up the CCS legislative apparatus in Tallahassee to include insisting that Pam Stewart, Kathleen Shanahan and Sally Bradshaw of the Florida Board of Education, Mary Ellen Elia, Hillsborough Superintendent of Schools, and Florida legislators John Thrasher, John Legg, Joe Negron, Erik Fresen, Anitere Flores, Don Gaetz, Kelli Stargel, and Will Weatherford to remove themselves from serving on the Jeb Bush Foundation for Excellence in Education.

On Friday, October 4th, the Florida Stop Common Core Coalition (FSCCC), a statewide coalition representing dozens of organizations and hundreds of thousands of Florida parents and citizens, sent a letter to Governor Rick Scott with copies to interim Florida Commissioner of Education Pam Stewart, Board of Education Chairman Gary Chartrand, and the Florida legislature.

The letter accuses Governor Scott of playing the citizens of Florida. The FSCCC letter lists the following concerns:

  • Commissioner Pam Stewart has made statements to the press that “while the Department of Education plans to hold community town hall meetings to hear from the public about the pros and cons of the new Common Core State Standards, she [Stewart] expects little changes in the curriculum as a result.”
  • Statements were made by the commissioner to other opponent groups indicate that parents will have a mere three minutes per specific standard to make their concerns known, forcing them to wade through hundreds of pages of standards documents and become pedagogical experts in order to advocate for their children, mirroring the same intimidating process put forth by Senator John Legg in his call for input.
  • The planned format will not allow for parents and experts to discuss what is missing from the standards, poor organization, and other problems.
  • Each hearing is scheduled to be only three hours long, which will be inadequate for both the public and experts to testify about the many flaws with the standards themselves, much less the very important related concerns regarding data mining, psychological manipulation and testing, etc.

“The plan for these hearings and the statements by the commissioner are reminiscent of the manipulative practices employed during the education accountability summit,” said Randy Osborne, director of education for Florida Eagle Forum and Heartland Research.  “These actions combined with the deceptive radio ads promoted by former Governor Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, a foundation funded by the corporate interests that stand to profit immensely from Common Core at the expense of our children, are an insult to Floridians and an assault on our liberties.”

“All of this evidence that these hearings are meant to be manipulated to the pre-determined outcome of continuing to ram Common Core down the throats of Florida families and citizens, as was done during the education summit, is a major betrayal of the trust of Floridians,” said Dr. Karen Effrem, president of Education Liberty Watch and a co-founder of the Florida Stop Common Core Coalition.  Our statewide coalition calls upon Governor Scott and the legislature to stop protecting the wealthy and powerful special corporate and foundation interests at the expense of our children.  We demand open and transparent public hearings now and support of Representative Mayfield’s HB 25 to completely stop funding and implementation of Common Core until much more information is available regarding academic quality, cost and data privacy. HB 25 is the true implementation of concepts in Governor Scott’s order and letters.”

Common Core = Conditions + Coercion + Conflict of Interest

WDW – FL received an email from a frustrated parent in Florida who was tired of the “script” being repeated to her. Her opposition to Common Core came after months of research and really trying to understand all of it.  She is just one voice among many parents that feel the same way. . In her email she states, “Please see attached doc[cument] that I have been working on. The concept of the doc[ument] was to take all those quotes that came from [Secretary of Education Arne] Duncan, [Microsoft founder Bill] Gates, [President] Obama, etc and to put them all into a doc[ument] that helped to clearly debunk the standards and all the claims that are being made in regards to them … from the original source. ”

Read  the report titled “Welcome to the new Common Core fuzzy math: CC = Conditions + Coercion + Conflict of Interest“.

The following are excerpts from her document:

We also changed the way we do business at the Department of Education. Instead of issuing top-down edicts, we provided incentives for and supports for states districts, schools and local communities to undertake reform themselves, including offering more flexibility to states in the form of waivers from No Child Left Behind … The Obama Record in Education, Secretary Duncan’s Remarks to the Mom Congress, April 30, 2012

bush obama duncan

President Obama, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in Miami. Photo courtesy of the Miami-Herald.

“Why deal with pesky Congress when you get to make all the rules?” said Michael Petrilli, executive vice president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The department doesn’t have the authority to declare waivers high-risk, he said, and one of the states should call Duncan’s bluff.

States are awarded points for their compliance with a rubric of standards on issues like teacher evaluations and the number of charter schools, and applicants compete for a share of the $3.4 billion pool. The program, which began with $4.6 billion in stimulus funds, has been credited with galvanizing almost every state to either make significant changes to education laws, gain support of teacher unions, or to raise education standards across the board—all without distributing a penny in federal money. Education reforms spark ‘quiet revolution’ By ABBY PHILLIP, July 27, 2010.

Read the full document here.

“While sometimes I’ve been called an architect of their standards, I think their true architecture is evidence,” Coleman said. “That’s the binding secret of the standards.” Coleman, Zimba and Sue Pimentel, an education consultant, made sure the standards reflect the skills students need to succeed after high school.

National Governors Association:

According to the latest IRS 990 form for the NGA’s Center for Best Practices, the nonprofit arm of NGA that shares “a common pool of cash and investments” in 2010 received 80 percent of its $14.8 million annual income from taxpayers. Tax documents also show that back in 2004, the earliest available documents traced, NGA received $31 million from taxpayers. Tax funding has made up most of NGA’s income every year in between.

Despite its heavy tax support, NGA is not required to make meetings, votes, and materials public like government bodies, and it has not done so for its work on Common Core.

NGA is a private trade organization whose actions have no legal binding on states. Governors do vote during NGA’s two annual meetings to express shared priorities, former Virginia Gov. George Allen (R) told School Reform News, but “by the time they vote on a position the [resolutions] get watered down so much any objections are already accommodated. It’s unlike legislatures, with committee hearings and votes.”

Previous School Reform News reports have revealed state and federal tax money provide approximately half of CCSSO’s operating funds, and that Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation money has been intimately involved in this behind-closed-doors process. ‘State-Led’ Common Core Pushed by Federally Funded Nonprofit, By: Joy Pullman, Heartland Institute, April 24, 2013.

When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better. Imagine having the people who create electrifying video games applying their intelligence to online tools that pull kids in and make algebra fun. Bill Gates – National Conference of State Legislatures, July 21, 2009

Study calls on US DOE to stop bribing states to adopt Common Core

The United States Department of Education (USED) should be prohibited from making adoption of national English and math standards known as Common Core a condition or incentive for receipt of federal funding, and both USED and organizations like the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, whose dues are paid with taxpayer funds, should make public the amount of time and money they have invested in promoting Common Core according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.

“Common Core fundamentally alters the relationship between the federal government and the states,” says former Texas Commissioner of Education Robert Scott, the author of A Republic of Republics: How Common Core Undermines State and Local Autonomy over K-12 Education. “States are sacrificing their ability to inform what their students learn.”

To read the full study click here.

Three federal laws explicitly prohibit the federal government from directing, supervising, funding, or controlling any nationalized standards, testing, or curriculum. Yet Race to the Top (RttT), a competitive $4.35 billion federal grant program, gave preference to states that adopted or indicated their intention to adopt Common Core and participated in one of two federally funded consortia developing assessments linked to Common Core.

USED subsequently made adoption of Common Core one of the criteria for granting states conditional waivers from the accountability provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind law.

In his preface for the paper, Iowa’s U.S. Senator Charles Grassley writes that when gov­ernment makes “decisions that affect a child’s education, these decisions should be made at a level of government close to the parents and students who are affected.” He goes on to criticize how what began as a plan to develop standards that states could adopt voluntarily has become a subject of federal coercion.

Scott notes that the adoption of new standards normally takes years from the time they are initially written by panels of educators, made available for extended periods of public review, and revised until they are adopted. But because of RttT’s deadlines, these periods were reduced to a few months or even weeks.

As a result of the rushed process, states adopted Common Core without knowing about assessments; the outcomes for which students, and in some cases teachers, will be held accountable. Other unknowns include what the passing score will be, who will set it, and whether it will be the same from state to state.

The three most populous states – California, Texas and Florida – also have systematic processes for adopting textbooks. These reviews happen on a regular cycle and would be disrupted and often expedited due to the need to adopt instructional materials aligned with the new standards in time for them to be implemented.

The expedited process by which Common Core was adopted in most states meant teachers had no opportunity to inform the standards’ content. In some states, the new standards are substantially different than what had been taught. In many cases, teachers will be teaching material in different grades than it had been before.

Scott describes all the “learning on the go” Common Core will require as a very expensive gamble. The one-year cost of new technology, instructional materials and teacher professional development is estimated at $10.5 billion for the 45 states and the District of Columbia, which have adopted the standards. With ongoing expenses, the cost is expected to rise to about $16 billion.

Scott also describes why Texas chose not to adopt Common Core while he served as commissioner of education. Disruption of the textbook adoption cycle, the lengthy process of making the standards available to the public and seeking approval from the state Board of Education, and the cost of changing procedures and parts of the education code were among the reasons for the decision not to adopt.

Texas would have been in line for a $700 million RttT grant, but “it costs more than $300 million per day to run public schools in Texas,” Scott says. “Giving up substantial autonomy to direct education policy in return for roughly enough money to run the schools for two days was not a trade-off we were willing to make.”

This report is co-sponsored by the American Principles Project, the Pacific Research Institute, and the Civitas Institute. Pioneer’s extensive research on Common Core national education standards includes:  Common Core Standards Still Don’t Make the Grade,The Road to a National Curriculum: The Legal Aspects of the Common Core Standards, Race to the Top, and Conditional Waivers, and National Cost of Aligning States and Localities to the Common Core Standards. Recent national media coverage includes op-eds placed in The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard.

ABOUT THE PIONEER INSTITUTE:

Pioneer Institute is an independent, non-partisan, privately funded research organization that seeks to improve the quality of life in Massachusetts through civic discourse and intellectually rigorous, data-driven public policy solutions based on free market principles, individual liberty and responsibility, and the ideal of effective, limited and accountable government.