New Jersey Senate to Vote on Slowing Common Core on Thursday

Gov. Chris Christie may have a bill on his desk by the of the week that delays by at least two years the use of new student assessments linked to the Common Core state standards.

The state Senate has scheduled a vote for Thursday afternoon on legislation (A3081) that establishes an Education Review Task Force to analyze the Common Core standards, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessments and the use of students' test results in evaluating teachers.

It seems unlikely Christie would support the bill, but he has indicated he'll be making an announcement related to Common Core and PARCC, such as changes to the program done through an executive order, at some point over the next few days.

The bill says that for at least two years, or longer if the task force's final report isn't completed within the year it's supposed to take, PARCC assessments can't be used as a high school graduation requirement or for other school or students accountability purposes. It also says that growth in students' test scores can't be used for at least two years for a teacher's or principal's evaluation.

The bill would give school districts the option of administering the PARCC assessment online, using a pencil and paper format, or a combination of the two, in the upcoming two school years.

The task force would have 15 members, including acting Education Commissioner David Hespe or his designee and eight members recommended by the following organizations: the American Federation of Teachers New Jersey, the New Jersey Association of School Administrators, the New Jersey Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the New Jersey Council of County Vocational Schools, the New Jersey Education Association, the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association, the New Jersey School Boards Association and the Statewide Parent Advocacy Network.

Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto would each appoint three public members, including a parent or guardian of a student enrolled in a New Jersey public school, an individual with expertise in language arts literacy instruction and curriculum and an individual with expertise in math instruction and curriculum.

The bill was passed by the Assembly on June 16, 72-4 with two voting to abstain. Republican assemblymen Jon Bramnick, Jack Ciattarelli, John DiMaio and Declan O'Scanlon voted no, while assemblywomen Eliana Pintor Marin, a Democrat, and Donna Simon, a Republican, voted to abstain.

Two Democratic assemblymen, Jason O'Donnell and Benjie Wimberly, were absent from the June 16 voting session.

http://www.app.com/story/news/politics/capitolquickies/2014/07/07/nj-senate-to-vote-thursday-on-slowing-common-core/12298553/

This Funny As Hell,Were Acorn? There May Be Voter Fraud in Afghan Presidential Election, But Here In U.S, There No Such Thing As Voter Fraud, Liberal Just Can Make Up There Minds, ( There Is Voter Fraud and There IS No Voter Fraud)

Afghanistan’s presidential election, touted in advance as its first ever democratic and peaceful transition of power, looks set instead to deliver a verdict that could deeply divide the country just months before most U.S. troops are due to depart. 

Preliminary results released by the Independent Election Commission Monday pointed to a victory for Ashraf Ghani, but amid claims by rival Abdullah Abdullah of massive rigging, ballots from some 7,000 voting stations – almost one-third of the total – are to be recounted. 

Secretary of State John Kerry, in a statement released as he traveled to China early Tuesday, said the U.S. expected Afghan authorities to investigate allegations of irregularities, but also warned against any attempts by people protesting the interim results to take matters into their own hands. 

“I have noted reports of protests in Afghanistan and of suggestions of a ‘parallel government’ with the gravest concern,” Kerry said, adding that “there is no justifiable recourse to violence or threats of violence, or for resort to extra-constitutional measures or threats of the same.” 

“We call on all Afghan leaders to maintain calm in order to preserve the gains of the last decade and maintain the trust of the Afghan people,” he said. “Any action to take power by extra-legal means will cost Afghanistan the financial and security support of the United States and the international community. “ 

Earlier, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki stressed that the results were “not final or authoritative and may not predict the final outcome.” 

“Serious allegations of fraud” had not been sufficiently investigated, she told a briefing. 
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/us-cal...

NEA Calls for Secretary Duncan's Resignation? What will Happen To Obamacore If this has to happen?

Delegates to the National Education Association's annual convention passed a new business item July 4 calling for U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to resign.

The surprising move comes on the heels of union anger over moves across the United States to revise due-process protections, tenure, and seniority—some of which have been supported by Democrats, including the Obama administration.

Proposed by the union's powerful California affiliate, the item cites "the Department's failed education agenda focused on more high-stakes testing, grading and pitting public school students against each other based on test scores" as its rationale for demanding the secretary's resignation.

Similarly themed items were introduced at the 2013, 2012, 2011, and 2010 meetings, but have never before passed. (The union did, in 2011, approve an NBI severely chastising Duncan.)

In addition, the California Teachers Association has had an ax to grind with the secretary since he commented on the Vergara v. California ruling, which found that the state's tenure law violated student rights.

Duncan seemed to support the decision, though his statement on it was not a hearty endorsement. Instead, he said that the groups should work together to rewrite the laws. After backlash from American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, the secretary went out of his way to flesh out his opinion on Vergara in a blog post.

UPDATE: Dean Vogel, the president of the CTA, said in an interview that his members have made clear their opposition to the Department of Education's support for expanding charter schools and tying teacher evaluations to student test scores. "Vergara was the straw that broke the camel's back," he said. "The Secretary's response to the Vergara verdict—it was just shameful. And it underscored his lack of understanding."

NEA has had a tense relationship with the Obama administration, and it's unclear how exactly this aggressive move will affect the union.

For years, as Education Week has reported, the NEA has vented its frustration with President Obama by essentially redirecting it towards Duncan. This strategy has allowed the union to criticize the administration without looking foolish, especially during the 2012 re-election season—after all, the union has never once endorsed a Republican presidential candidate, and had no choice but to throw its weight behind Obama.

But it's also important to note that California is one of the most populous of the state affiliates, and each year submits a large number of the NBIs that are debated. Last year, sources say, the CTA submitted 36 of the 92 total NBIs.

NEA put out its official response to the California item yesterday. President Dennis Van Roekel stated: "NEA members are understandably frustrated with Secretary Duncan and many of the Department of Education's policies in recent years. We will continue to push the Department of Education to drive student-centered policy changes that are influenced by those who know best—educators working in our classrooms and in our schools—rather than profiteers."

UPDATE: When asked whether the AFT joined the NEA in calling for Duncan's resignation, Weingarten said, "I understand the sentiment." She pointed to the letter she sent to the Secretary immediately after his commentary on the Vergara decision.

Dorie Nolt, press secretary for the Department of Education, wrote in an email, "Secretary Duncan looks forward to continuing to work with NEA and its new leadership."

Read More: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2014/07...

New paper examines ways to save babies with Down syndrome from abortion

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A new paper authored by Mark Bradford, president of the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation USA, and released this week by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, examines societal responses to individuals diagnosed with Down syndrome (Trisomy 21) and makes policy recommendations to further improve their lives.  

“Ninety nine percent of individuals diagnosed with Down syndrome report being happy with their lives. Studies also show that their joy has a ripple effect in their families and communities. The impact of these unique men and women has recently been spotlighted in the media – everywhere from the King’s ice rink in Los Angeles to the Reds’ on-deck circle in Cincinnati,” said Chuck Donovan, president of the Charlotte Lozier Institute.

“Tragically, the majority of babies diagnosed prenatally with Down syndrome are aborted. Mark Bradford and the Lejeune Foundation, along with other disability advocates, ardently believe that this does not have to be. With Down syndrome, as with any other difference or disability, we must respond with knowledge, understanding and compassion,” Donovan added.

Click "like" if you are PRO-LIFE! 

In the age of sophisticated prenatal screening, babies diagnosed prenatally with Down syndrome are often targeted for abortion. Bradford writes that, though abortion may not be the parents’ preferred option, “It is chosen because of fear of an uncertain future, grief over the loss of an image parents had in mind for their child and their family, concern that their child will suffer, concern over a lifetime of managing health issues, and other similar concerns, most of which can be dispelled by the experiences of families living with Down syndrome.”

Bradford continues:

“…Advocates should work to expand prenatal nondiscrimination legislation that is consistent with other federal laws intended to protect the disabled. While research to improve the lives of those living with Down syndrome has progressed rapidly, federal funding for Down syndrome research lags considerably behind other similar genetic disorders. Research to improve birth outcomes and quality of life over the lifespan will certainly improve the message given with a prenatal diagnosis and discourage the termination of Down syndrome pregnancies.

“Those living with Down syndrome have mild to moderate intellectual disability. It may soon be possible to improve cognition in those living with Down syndrome enough to ensure employment and independence for many. It may also soon be possible to restore neurological development before birth, radically changing even the best story that can now be given to women who receive an unexpected prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome. It is critical that NIH funding levels be increased to support science that is just now translating into therapeutic trials to improve the lives of those living with Down syndrome.” 

Access the full study at the Charlotte Lozier Institute’s website.

How a simple pro-life gesture brought this woman out of the abortion industry

As pro-life activists we have to remind ourselves from time to time that not every individual in the abortion industry is fully aware of what they are participating in.

This was the case for Ruth Yorston, who worked as a receptionist at her local abortion clinic, the Fort Wayne Women’s Health Organization, where her mother also worked as an assistant administrator.

Ruth came from a progressive liberal family where the topic of abortion was assumed to be “a woman’s right” and discussed no further, which is why it seemed like a natural choice for her to join her mother working at the abortion clinic when she finished high school.

After about a year of working there, she told her friend Andy about the job. Andy, who was strongly pro-life, responded with a gentle gesture that completely reversed her view of abortion.

She quit her job immediately, and though it was the cause of much contention within her household for years, she worked hard to maintain a solid relationship with her parents. This effort paid off in her mother’s final years when they were ultimately able to reconcile their differences.

Watch the video to hear how that happened, and see all the videos from the CONVERTED conference right here. 

http://www.lifesitenews.com/pulse/how-a-simple-pro-life-gesture-brought-this-woman-out-of-the-abortion-indust

How Much has Obama’s Vacations Cost Taxpayers? Hint: It’s a Lot!

The Obamas are the modern-day aristocrats against which our Founders rebelled. Though despising the rich, President Obama jetsets with his family around the globe and lavishes his family with expensive, extravagant vacations- courtesy of the American taxpayer.

he opulent lifestyle of the Obamas is enough to make King Louis XVI look modest by comparison.

 

According to a new report from the Daily Caller, President Obama has vacationed a lot and his extravagances have cost taxpayers roughly $44 million.

 

The Daily Caller reports: 

The Obamas have spent over 44 million dollars in taxpayer money on travel and vacations. Some are even calling him the “most well-traveled, expensive” president in our nation’s history.

 

As Americans head off for the long holiday weekend, let’s take a look back at some of the president’s holiday spending.

 

Our president vacations a lot — we’re talking $44,351,777.12 worth of “a lot,” with most expenses charged to the American taxpayer.

 

As of March 2014, Obama has spent more time traveling internationally than any other president, taking 31 trips since assuming office in 2009. The 119 days spent overseas have cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

 

At the same point in their respective presidencies, George W. Bush had spent 116 days on 28 trips, Bill Clinton had spent 113 days on 27 trips and Ronald Reagan had spent 73 days on just 14 trips.

 

In 2010, Obama flew aboard Air Force One 172 times, nearly every other day. Just the cost of flying aboard Air Force One to Obama’s hometown of Chicago reportedly hovers around $180,000 per hour.

 

In addition to all of his international travel, the president spends a significant amount of time traveling with his family. The Obama family has taken vacations to exclusive beaches in New England, private clubs in Key Largo and, of course, luxurious beaches in Hawaii.

 

According to the government watchdog group Judicial Watch, beginning with the infamous New York “date night,” the Obamas have spent $44,351,777.12 in taxpayer cash on travel expenses.

 

The actual total cost may be higher, as the White House is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

 

“Here we have a president that gets on the budget line by line, but this apparently doesn’t apply to his travel,” president of Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton, said in an interview with The Daily Caller. 

Of course, this analysis likely omits “official business” trips that are, in all reality, vacations.

 

Last year, the Obamas toured Africa at a cost of over $100 million for taxpayers, while defending the vacation as official business. On this “official” business trip, President Obama was joined by his wife, children, his mother-in-law and his niece. 

http://www.tpnn.com/2014/07/05/how-much-has-obamas-vacations-cost-taxpayers-hint-its-a-lot/

Public School Teacher Has Some Harsh Words for Common Core and the ‘Toxic Culture of Education

Joshua Katz has been a public school teacher in Florida for seven years now.

He started off like many a new high school teacher: He lined the desks up in neat rows, taught bell to bell, made sure students stayed awake — the usual.

[It was the] run-of-the-mill, do what you do because that’s what happened to you,” Katz told TheBlaze.

But then he started to read and research more of the nuances of his profession. He started trying different teaching techniques, experimented with desk organization, but he still found he couldn’t go as deep as he wanted to on certain topics with students.

“We had this looming test in April, which is bizarre. To assess a student on year-round learning in April with two months of school left is ridiculous,” he said.

Katz is referring to standardized testing. While it’s nothing new, Katz argued that its purpose has changed in a way that’s detrimental to students, teachers and the system as a whole.

This and other frustrations eventually led him to a national platform where he talked about what he calls the “toxic culture of education.”

“It doesn’t matter if a student is a gifted artist, a loving caretaker, a poetic writer or a talented musician. Those students are the fish being measured on how they climb trees,” Katz said in a May TED Talk about how students are measured by standardized tests, which made some wavesin the education world, but especially in Orange County where he teaches and recently announced his candidacy for school board.

“We say the be-all end-all is college, or we leave students to the lowest skill level work, which, more and more, is being occupied by college-educated people. Even with the honors students, they are, in general, too worried about grades and results, and not interested in true learning, which affects their performance in college,” Katz continued.

The ‘Toxic Culture of Education’

Katz told TheBlaze this “toxic culture of education [is] so big, so vague that it goes beyond classrooms, schools and might even go beyond national policy.”

While standardized tests at one point were meant to assess where a student was at, comparing them to how others around the state or country were doing, Katz said that concept has been made “completely punitive.” He said standardized tests are now used to label students, evaluate teacher performance, give schools a grade and “infuse fear at every level” in the educational system.

“It was maybe a good way to see where one group of students [was] comparing to another and just to say, ‘OK what does that mean?’” Katz said of how such testing used to be treated. “Now it means Johnny can’t move onto fourth grade. Mrs. Smith won’t get a pay raise or will have to move to a different school.”

In his TED Talk, Katz labeled businesses as driving this use of standardized testing:

You see, we only have one way to address accountability: Standardized Testing. So, we implement standardized testing, and it shows that schools are failing, teachers are failing, and students are failing. And when everything is failing, guess what we need? We need new textbooks, we need new resources, we need new training, we need charter schools, we need private schools. And who creates all these things we need? Private businesses. The only way to feed the business model in our Toxic Culture is to perpetuate the picture of failure. In fact, I’d love to see any education company that has a business model that is built upon success. There is no money in student success.

[…] these students continue testing, continue failing, and the districts continue new initiatives that can solve the problem. Who makes these products? Who has these solutions? Our super villain. Companies like Pearson and McGraw Hill which operate on legislation and policy written by private lobbying groups like ALEC. Buy the next textbook, the next workbook, the next software package. I’ve been through four Algebra textbooks in seven years. And that’s where the schools and districts are spending all the money. And we stick to the standardized test (guess who makes those?).

And what’s his stance on the Common Core State Standards Initiative, which will come with a new standardized test system?

In general, Katz said that having standards is good, but he is not necessarily a fan of Common Core.

“[E]ducation is a community issue. Every community is different and every community has a unique set of demographics, needs. To have a blanket set of guidelines, you need to keep that in mind.”

He spoke more strongly against the Common Core in his TED talk:

And it’s about to get worse. The Common Core will do more damage [with] its high-stakes test (not to mention its myopic standards masked in a guise of critical thinking which is just developmentally inappropriate rote. I see my daughter’s work in the first grade. They ain’t fooling me). Any education reform that does not address high-stakes testing and the non-cognitive factors of true student achievement, like character and personal habits, is a waste of time and it kills our kids.

Where guidelines can work, Katz said, is when they allow flexibility for different communities and are driven from stakeholders that include parents, teachers and students, not just the main drivers who he said are often business and lawmakers.

Watch Katz’s full TED talk:

 ‘Let Go of This Emphasis’ on College?

In Katz’s TED Talk, standardized tests aren’t the only issue. Part of the “toxic culture” also includes the idea that “if you don’t go to college, you have no worth.”

“Look at average amount of student loan debt right now. Is college for everybody? No, obviously not,” Katz told TheBlaze.

And that’s just the financial aspect. Katz said that as baby boomers age, trade jobs will continue to open up, but is there anyone to fill them?

“I don’t see clean-shaven young kids knowing what they’re doing with plumbing,” Katz observed.

OBAMA IS A COMPLETE FAILURE - ACCORDING TO OBAMA

This has been an unpleasant year for backers of Common Core and some say Barack Obama is to blame.

After reaching a high-water mark where 46 states were committed to the new multi-state educational standards, the last six months saw Indiana, Oklahoma, and South Carolina all break away  from the standards and mandate the adoption of new ones.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is battling the state’s education board to pull his state out, and North Carolina is strongly considering withdrawal as well. A recent poll from Rasmussen, meanwhile, suggests support among parents of schoolchildren may be dropping.

Common Core supporters are quick to point out that the standards have survived several challenges and remain in force in over 80 percent of U.S. states, but it’s safe to say Common Core’s roll-out has been less than the smooth ride proponents hoped for several years ago, when standards were adopted with little opposition. This turn of events has backers wondering if different decisions years ago could have saved them a great deal of trouble.

While many criticisms of the Common Core standards have been brought forth, among the most frequent and powerful is the claim that the standards constitute a federal takeover of education. That common attack incenses Common Core’s supporters on the right, who argue that Common Core’s genesis in an initiative by state governors shows that it is a state endeavor, not a federal one.

The “Common Core as federal takeover” argument draws strength, however, from a program that has become a conservative punching bag: Race to the Top. Race to the Top is a contest created by the Department of Education in 2009 to award over $4 billion to certain states that were seen as implementing desired education reforms. One of the ways schools could increase their chances of winning a piece of the pie was by implementing common school standards with several other states; in other words, Common Core.

At a stroke, regardless of its initial origins, Common Core became associated for many with the Obama administration, and for Common Core’s supporters, that has proven very regrettable.

Michael Petrilli, executive vice president at the Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank that supports Common Core, told The Daily Caller News Foundation that entangling Race to the Top with Common Core has proven to be a “catastrophic decision.”

“There were some Common Core supporters who thought this federal incentive would be helpful to get states on board,” Petrilli said. “When it first happened, when the Race to the Top application came out, I didn’t scream bloody murder … and I regret that.”

“It was a shortcut,” he continued, “but it really poisoned the well for many on the right.”

Petrilli said that those closely involved with the standards’ creation failed to anticipate that federal sponsorship would make Common Core look like an undertaking of the Obama administration.

“Our belief was, ‘Well, look, the feds had nothing to do with the creation of the standards. You didn’t have federal officials writing the math or English standards…But that distinction in the end hasn’t mattered to a lot of conservatives…and so that was a huge mistake,” he said.

Cheryl Oldham, vice president of the Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Center for Education and the Workforce, which also backs Common Core, agrees that Race to the Top has proven to be a tactical blunder.

“It’s a case of no good deed goes unpunished,” she told TheDCNF. “[Race to the Top] is the easiest thing for the opposition to point back to now.” She said in her view the monetary incentive were a genuine effort to promote a bipartisan goal, but the polarizing nature of the Obama Administration has instead turned the incentive into a powerful repellent.

In hindsight, she said, keeping the Department of Education uninvolved may have slowed the standards’ acceptance, but also headed off the blowback.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/02/common-core-backers-regret-obamas-involvement/#ixzz36R78MIzm

Fact Manipulation Rampant In Common Core History, Science

In Part 1  published by Thorner and O’Neil at Illinois Review on Monday, June 2nd, Common Core Language Arts and Math were evaluated and shown to be seriously lacking in content as a practical and common sense approach to education, assuming as it does that all children will learn what is prescribed at the same rate within each grade level.


What about Common Core history?
David Coleman, an architect of Common Core, is now president of the College Board responsible for aligning the SAT to the Common Core.  Even so he found time to basically rewrite American History.  Beginning in the fall of this year, close to a half million high school sophomores and juniors will be learning from a new set of AP history standards.   Coleman’s detailed 98-page document  indicates the revised education material will be applicable in the Fall of 2014.


Jane Robbins, a senior fellow for APP Education of the American Principles Project and a retired AP U.S. History teacher from Pennsylvania, said the following about the Coleman-style AP history standards:


“The new “Framework” inculcates a consistently negative view of American culture.  For example, the units on colonial America stress the development of a rigid racial hierarchy and a ‘strong belief in British racial and cultural superiority.’  The Framework ignores the United States’ founding principles and their influence in inspiring the spread of democracy and galvanizing the movement to abolish slavery.  The Framework continues this theme by reinterpreting Manifest Destiny — rather than a belief that America has a mission to spread democracy and new technologies across the continent, the Framework teaches that it ‘was built on a belief in white racial superiority and a sense of American cultural superiority.”Coleman’s “Framework” dismisses the “Declaration of Independence” and the principles so eloquently expressed therein.  Benjamin Franklin and James Madison are not mentioned, and George Washington is minimized to a small snippet from his farewell address.  Ironically, two pages later the “Framework” grants teachers the flexibility to discuss the architecture of Spanish missions.  It can be surmised that Coleman rates the architecture of Spanish missions above honoring the heroes of 1776!

These omissions reflect not only a leftist slant on our history but also a general view that academic historical knowledge is unnecessary.  Just imagine how South Africans would respond if an unelected agency issued a history of their country that contained just one reference to Nelson Mandela.


Might new Common Core history books be confusing to students?  The “Gettysburg Address” will be taught to ninth and 10th graders without a mention of the Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, or why President Abraham Lincoln had traveled to Pennsylvania to make his famous speech. The “Gettysburg Address” unit can be found on the Web site of Student Achievement Partners, a nonprofit organization founded by lead author David Coleman and two others (Susan Pimentel and Jason


Zimba) also described as “lead authors of the Common Core State Standards.
An Arkansas mother was disturbed by her daughter’s homework with instructions to “prioritize, revise, prune and/or add” amendments to the “Bill of Rights.”  Parents wonder if such a strange assignment might be an attempt to introduce students to the concept that it’s not unusual to make changes to our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and that maybe some or all should be eliminated.   Nevertheless, her assignment appears to coincide with the Common Core curriculum which perceives the “Bill of Rights” to be outdated and one that may not remain in its current form any longer.


Consider also how Common Core-approved textbooks are rewriting the Second Amendment.  In a book approved by Common Core for use in elementary schools, the author states the following description of the Second Amendment:
People have the right to certain weapons, providing that they register them and they have not been in prison. The founding fathers included this amendment to prevent the United States from acting like the British who had tried to take weapons away from the colonists.


These types of half-truths or manipulations are peppered throughout Common Core material.  Will teachers expand the lesson and explain the whole truth …. that there is nothing in the Second Amendment that excludes ownership of certain weapons from within its protection, and that the amendment reads:  “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”  If the teacher does not include that important phrase, unsuspecting children will be indoctrinated with the liberal misconception that government has the right to give and take away citizens’ rights to own


firearms. Neither can the fact be ignored that specific elected officials in power have an agenda to create new gun laws that will limit or exclude our gun rights.
Currently being used in Brevard County, Florida is a Prentiss Hall’s World History book that devotes a 72-page chapter to Islam and only one small paragraph for Judaism and Christianity, which are embedded in other chapters.  According to Prentiss Hall, the book is balanced on all religions, causing parents to wonder how many other falsehoods and indoctrination methods are being used in Common Core without parents’ knowledge .


Other examples are surfacing of teachers reacting irrationally when a student makes any mention of Christianity.  A California teacher bullied a student when he brought a Bible to class as his reading choice for a class assignment to read a nonfiction book.  The teacher claimed the Bible was not nonfiction; the student stated he believed it was nonfiction.  The teacher did not leave the issue a private one.  Instead, she asked the entire class to vote as to whether the bible was nonfiction.  To her apparent shock, only two students believed it was not nonfiction.  The vast majority believed the Bible was indeed nonfiction.


Overt anti-Christian behavior has not been reported in most classrooms, but reports cf abuse have been escalating.   It has been suggested the cause is connected to the liberal agenda of Common Core curriculum, which subtly seeps into the minds of educators and thus their students. There is an emphasis in America to stop bullying and increase tolerance, but too often that rule is ignored if the abuse is directed to Christians or Christianity. Parents need to be sensitive to this problem.


What About Common Core Science? 
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSSP), were adopted on April 9, 2013.  It took three years for national science education groups to develop Common Core Science Standards.  Because U.S. students don’t rank at the top in science, the creators of the Next Generation Science Standards looked to Singapore, South Korea, and Finland for help in devising their standards.  States having officially adopted NSS (last update April 9, 2014) are:  Rhode Island, Kentucky, Kansas, Maryland, Vermont, California, Delaware, Washington, District of Columbia, Nevada, Oregon and Illinois.
The decision to call Common Core Science standards the “Next Generation Science Standards” may be due to the negativity surrounding Common Core, and thus a way to avoid the toxic name.  The public is beginning to realize what federalized standards actually mean to the future of math and English K-12 education in America.  State committees were allowed some input into formulating the standards, but in the end standards were set by national science education groups.


The science standards, like those for math and English, are not based on empirical evidence of efficacy, nor are they tested in any environment. They are fresh out of the box and will be field-tested statewide in any state that signs on.  No longer is science treated as a list of facts and ideas students are expected to memorize.  Instead, fewer ideas will be covered using more approaches, so students have a deeper understanding of the subjects covered.


Proponents of evolution and manmade climate change are ecstatic about the Common Core Science Standards.  Children must embrace the notion that CO2 emissions from gas, coal and oil cause global warming.   It is not rocket science to figure out whyWyoming has become the first state to block the new set of national science standards.  It’s economy depends on oil.  As Steve Goreham explains in his book, The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism, scientific evidence indicates that warming and cooling trends are naturally occurring as an earth cycle.  Although scientists disagree about the extent to which man’s activities are a cause of climate change, the Next Generation of Science Standards teach unconditionally that human activity is responsible for detrimental climate change and emphasize that action must be taken before it is too late to “save the planet.”  Most parents do not want schools to use fear tactics in the classroom.   However, the government has invested heavily into their man-made global warming agenda, and its apologists are not adverse to propagandizing young minds with their controversial material.


Worth reading is the new Common Core Educational Standards on Climate Change,  which dovetails with those of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  A recent report by the IPCC on March 31 paints a grim picture on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.  Children will be held captive to a central learning theme that mankind should be reducing its use of fossil fuels, as set forth in the Essential Principles of Climate Science.  It is highly doubtful that students will be taught to be cautious of the government’s conclusion on Anthropogenic Global Warming (humans as the main cause of global warming), nor will they be taught of the known benefits of CO2 in the atmosphere.  “What if” scenarios will he used to convince children that the dogma being taught is scientific fact and represents settled science.


There is no scientific consensus about climate change, as was documented by the April 9th release by The Heartland Institute of“Climate Change Reconsidered II,”   This study from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) draws its conclusions from thousands of peer-reviewed papers and finds global warming to be an “entirely manageable, if not beneficial, change in the climate.”  While NIPCC seeks to objectively analyze and interpret data and facts without conforming to any specific agenda, it stands in direct contrast to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which is government-sponsored, politically motivated, and predisposed to believing that climate change is a problem in need of a U.N. solution.

Elections Have Consequences

A PhD from Bulgaria, warns this nation of things to come if there is a full application of the Common Core standards.  The end result will be “fully socialized communistic education, entirely controlled by the government.”School districts nationwide have loaded up students with billions of dollars’ worth of tablets, laptops, iPods and more on the theory expressed by Obama last year, that preparing American kids to compete with students around the globe will require interactive, individualized learning experiences driven by new technology.  In Finland there is roughly one computer per five Finnish students in schools.  In the US. that ratio is almost one to one.  Yet in the latest PISA rankings, 18 education systems — including Finland’s — outperformed the United States in reading, math and science.

We should all be very concerned about our country when we consider the alarming changes and potential changes Common Core is having and will have on our children.  School children are clearly being indoctrinated with a liberal curriculum, while at the same time parental control is being systematically reduced.  Local control is diminishing at the same alarming rate that the federal government is increasing.   I shudder to think what this nation will be as our children are indoctrinated with the junk science of the Next Generation Science Standards; strange and ambiguous ways of doing math; English/ Language Arts absent the classics; and a twisted, convoluted history of this nation, all defined by liberals, such as David Coleman, with links reaching back to the United Nations Agenda 21 of 1992 and before.


If you are convinced Common Core is one more liberal program designed by the current administration for the purpose of drawing our nation closer to Socialism, which is a step away from Communism, then you must be wanting to know what can be done about it.    We all must keep ourselves informed, while we  get to work undoing the liberal changes initiated by liberal educators, bureaucrats, and politicians.   Liberals have devised highly questionable and controversial programs such as Common Core, Obamacare, Climate Change, and others.  Constitutionalists claim the enacting of Common Core violated our laws and Constitution.


Our children deserve better; our country must do better.   Elections have consequences.  Our representatives have not been efficient or effective in keeping the above exceedingly faulty programs from being enacted, so why vote for them or their ilk in the future?   Elections are designed to vote out those who are not paying attention to us or the health of our country.  Those who love America must seek out excellent candidates, support them, encourage others to get involved, tell friends what you know, join Conservative groups, and pray!  Together, we can change the direction of our Country, and not be the generation that let America’s greatness slip away.  With that in mind, please consider contacting your elected officials and ask them to “Cut Common Core” out of our schools.  It is indeed ROTTEN TO THE CORE!

[Originally published at Illinois Review]

http://blog.heartland.org/2014/06/thorner-oneil-fact-manipulation-rampant-in-common-core-history-science/

Common Core and Critical Thinking: Sounds good, but is it?

To briefly summarize Common Core, the decision to adopt the Common Core


standards was left almost exclusively in the hands of the governors and the state boards of education. The public was not made aware that our education system was in the process of being changed, and certainly we were clueless that all states had been asked to accept an education system initiated at the federal level, something our forefathers prudently warned against. However, forty-five states committed to those standards, and did so even before the standards and/or accompanying curriculum were completed.
Yes, you read that correctly, States agreed to accept Common Core Standards without any proof whatsoever that it was superior to the system being replaced. It should be no surprise that parents and concerned citizens throughout America are just plain angry with the secrecy, the process, the lack of testing before being accepted and/or implemented in most every school in America, and the serious faults already discovered. It makes us wonder if this is still the America we have known and loved, when history, tradition, citizens, and our Constitution are ignored by so many levels of authority over us.

How might Common Core academic standards be described?
In a nutshell the intent is for teachers to work on critical thinking (a buzz word), rather than the traditional memorization method. That sounds like a good thing, right?  We all value critical thinking skills, so why is there so much controversy about the new education system?  The devil is in the details, which is what parents and educators are now discovering. Critical thinking exercises are woven into the curriculum but the liberal writers’ choices and messages from those exercises are controversial and being criticized.   For instance curriculum encourages students to question the morals and teachings they have received at home and church.  Oh, it is all done rather subtly and if it was only found to occur once or twice, nobody would get too excited.  However, we have known for decades that this tactic by liberals is unashamedly and blatantly practiced in most every American college and university.


 Up to 90 percent of college professors admit they are liberal, that hiring practices favor them, and that conservative professors are shunned and ridiculed by the dominate liberal staff.  Our college classrooms are traps for unsuspecting students to be inoculated with liberalism.   With such success, it is not a surprise liberals found a way to begin that liberal indoctrination much earlier in our children’s education experience.


Common Core's left-leaning influence can be observed in a 5th grade grammar class assignment. The exercise asked students to change several sentences by using possessive nouns in the following paragraph:  “The choices of the president affect everyone. He makes sure the laws of the country are fair. The commands of government officials must be obeyed by all.  The wants of an individual are less important than the well-being of the nation.”  Of concern to parents is that many of these types of assignments are often exclusive to the classroom, and thus parents are unaware if and when their child might be given an assignment which they would find objectionable.


Aside from examples of liberal indoctrination, there are other problems being discovered.  Before Common Core, students were taught the skills of memorization.   An example is when students would read a short story and then discuss the plot in class, thus encouraging students to read, remember, and relate what they learned.  Instead, Common Core asks students to invent what a character might say to a friend in an email, based on the story.  Some may not see a problem with that, but others consider the assignment an invitation for students to reveal personal feelings and private information, in which teachers gain personal information about their students and families.  Could that be a form of data mining?  Whether it is or not, actual data mining is already embedded in Common Core.  New technology development being pushed by feds allows for data collection on every child.
Students now have to connect the dots and apply critical thinking, in what experts are calling higher-order thinking necessary for preparing students for life after high school.  A Four-page Parents' Guide to Student Success (Color) is available for downloading here which outlines academic state standards for Common Core that a student should know at each grade level from Kindergarten to 8th grade, with special guides for high school English and Math. Those having concerns about Common Core believe the standards and curriculum are not grade level appropriate.  Some lower grades are inappropriately higher than brain development for that age, which explains the extreme frustration levels teachers and parents are witnessing in the students.  But, oddly, those higher standards are not seen at the Jr. High and High School level.  Instead, complaints are flooding in that higher level mathematics classes, such as Calculus, have been eliminated.


Teachers, principals, and parents are beginning to speak out against Common Core, some of which had been early supporters.  A powerful example is statements made by an award-winning principal, Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in New York, who went from being a Common Core supporter to becoming a strong opponent.  When she first learned about Common Core, she was excited about the possibilities that were promised by its promoters.  She even authored a book, “Opening the Common Core,” to help schools and teachers meet the goals of Common Core. However, after actually using Common Core, she discover problems, one of which was testing and evaluating teacher student test scores.  She is not alone as 1,536 New York principals signed a letter agreeing with her.  She saw and exposed other problem which she explains in these powerful statements.


"I confess that I was naïve. I should have known in an age in which standardized tests direct teaching and learning, that the standards themselves would quickly become operationalized by tests. Testing, coupled with the evaluation of teachers by scores, is driving its implementation. The promise of the Common Core is dying and teaching and learning are being distorted.  The well that should sustain the Core has been poisoned. .
 .
Test scores are a rough proxy for learning. . . .What occurs in a “data driven”, high-stakes learning environment is that the full domain of what should be learned narrows to those items tested.  The Common Core, for example, wants students to grow in five skill areas in English Language Arts — reading, writing, speaking, listening and collaboration. But the Common Core tests will only measure reading and writing.  Parents can expect that the other three will be neglected as teachers frantically try to prepare students for the difficult and high-stakes tests. What gets measured gets done, and make no mistake: “reformers” understand that full well.  In fact, they count on it. They see data, not children.  For the corporate reformers, test data constitute the bottom-line profits that they watch."

What about Common Core English Language Arts? 
Cursive writing has been removed from the curriculum, the same script used for our original official documents.   Like the math and history standards, the English language arts standards also went unnoticed because they were adopted by 45 state long before they were written or finalized.  English Language Arts standards insistthat reading must be divided equally (50-50) in the elementary grades between fiction and informational text, and divided 70-30 in favor of informational text in high school.  Teachers are lodging complaints stating many elementary school librarians and elementary students dislike being forced to read technical books, which are boring, instead of stories they enjoy reading. This Common Core mandate is resulting in a loss of interest in reading.  Why should Common Core standards set forth any percentages at all?  Common Core neglects age appropriateness and thus makes a teachers’ job close to impossible.  Not a good mix for a happy classroom.


A diminished emphases on literature in the secondary grades makes it unlikely that American students will study a meaningful range of significant literary works before graduation.  The decline in readiness for college reading is due largely to an increasingly incoherent, less challenging literature curriculum, which began in the 1960’s.  Common Core does not resolve that problem.


One book that would not be acceptable to many parents, but which has been designated as an approved piece of Common Core literature, is Barack Obama's biography.  Why?  They see no need for 4th graders to be taught that "America is, at its core, a racist nation."  


Another problem is how pornography has found its way into our children’s curricula through the guise of literature that addresses issues of race and culture.  Complaints have been made about the choice of reading material, but blatantly ignored.  So, what exactly are the parents’ complaints? Examples can be seen in these approved books: Invisible Man, written by Ralph Ellison and published in 1953, received complaints because of its graphic sexual themes of incestuous rape, rape as sexual play, and foul language.


Also considered objectionable is Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, a popular selection of Oprah's Book Club, which is about the rape of an eight-year-old girl by her father, told from the view of the sexual offender.  The book recounts actual sexual acts as described by the pedophile.


Once again, how can these extreme examples of pathetic circumstances and vile violations of established laws be something any reasonable adult would find acceptable for minors to read?  Are parents informed their children are reading this type of pornographic material? What does it say about schools that allow our children to be exposed to such sadness as seen in the violation of souls due to the pervert behavior of the dredges of our society?  What ever happened to reading the “Classics”, books that don’t pollute children’s minds but enrich and inspire them?  If we ever wonder why our culture has declined so quickly, examine what is read, seen, and heard in the media, and unfortunately even within our school classrooms and libraries.


What about Common Core Math?
The 100 page Standards for Mathematical Practice describe varieties of expertise that mathematics educators at all levels should seek to develop in their students.  Instead of simply teaching multiplication tables, schools are adopting "an inquiry method" of learning in which children are supposed to discover the knowledge for themselves.  In an odd pedagogical agenda, based on a belief that conceptual understanding must come before practical skills can be mastered, students must be able to explain the "why" of a Procedure.  According to the authors of Common Core, solving a math problem otherwise becomes a "mere calculation" and the student is viewed as not having true understanding.


Under Common Core standards, students will not learn traditional methods (stacking of numbers) of adding and subtracting double and triple digit numbers until fourth grade. The standard method for two and three digit multiplication is delayed until fifth grade, and the standard method for long division until sixth.  Students had been taught Algebra in 8th grade.  Common Core now recommends that it be taught starting in the 9th grade.  This change means that the great majority of American students will not be able to reach the calculus level in high school.  So, many parents are scratching their heads trying to figure out why the new system is better than the old, when colleges are looking for students who know calculus.  Some believe this will put low income families at a disadvantage because students who have parents able to hire tutors will have the advantage on college admissions.


It is not surprising that both teachers and parents are complaining that Common Core math standards focus too much on process.  Simple problems become confusing and create more opportunity for error, causing frustrated children. The Curriculum Director at a school in Grayslake, IL (a northern suburb of Chicago), was captured on video saying that the correct answer is less important than "the procedure” of a student arriving at that answer.  That means, arriving at the wrong answer doesn't matter as long as the child can explain how he/she calculated the problem.   If a student begins to think getting the right answer to a math problem isn’t as important as the method they use to get that answer, we can all hope they don’t become doctors,  pharmacists, or engineers.  Math is an exact science, and parents believe getting the right answer to a math problem should be the first goal.  A critical thinking exercise of how that answer was achieved can be another assignment, but should not be the main focus of mathematics, as it is with Common Core.  Once again age appropriateness has been ignored by Common Core authors.


Another problem with the new math and a growing frustration is that parents are unable to understand their child's homework assignment because the confusing Common Core way of adding and subtracting is foreign to them.  Children can no longer expect help from their parents, because even those with doctorate degrees cannot make sense of their grade school children’s arithmetic homework assignments.  Do we want parents to avoid helping and checking their child’s homework assignments?  How else does a parent know what is being taught, and whether their child is on track with the learning assignments?  Successful students usually have engaged parents willing and able to help at home.  Common Core tends to eliminate that advantage. Instead, Common Core is turning children into little mathematicians who don't know how to do actual math.


Part 2 will delve into Common Core History and Science standards.  Just as Common Core Language Arts and Math Standards reflect a leftist agenda as set forth in the 1992 UN Agenda 21, Common Core History and Science standards are likewise based in what is often described as a one-world government agenda.


http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2014/06/thorner-oneil-common-core-and-critical-thinking-sounds-good-but-is-it.html