Obama to Ask Congress For Billions of Dollars to Help Students Learn Computer Science? Your Luing Obama Tell Us Why You Did Think About This When You Passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ?

 



WASHINGTON (TheBlaze/AP) — President Barack Obama said Saturday he will ask Congress for billions of dollars to help students learn computer science skills and prepare for jobs in a changing economy.

“In the new economy, computer science isn’t an optional skill. It’s a basic skill, right along with the three R’s,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.

Obama said only about one-quarter of K-12 schools offer computer science instruction, but that most parents want their children to develop analytical and coding skills.

“Today’s auto mechanics aren’t just sliding under cars to change the oil. They’re working on machines that run on as many as 100 million lines of code,” Obama said. “That’s 100 times more than the Space Shuttle. Nurses are analyzing data and managing electronic health records. Machinists are writing computer programs.”

The federal budget proposal for 2017 that Obama plans to send Congress on Feb. 9 will seek $4 billion for grants to states and $100 million for competitive grants for school districts over the next three years to teach computer science in elementary, middle and high schools, administration officials said.

Separately, the National Science Foundation and the Corporation for National and Community Service this year will start spending $135 million to train teachers over five years.

Obama said also wants governors, mayors, business leaders and tech entrepreneurs to become advocates for more widespread computer science education.

Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, said computer science education is an “economic and social imperative for the next generation of American students.”

Smith, who spoke on a media call arranged by the White House, said that up to a million U.S. technology jobs could be left unfilled by the end of the decade. Meanwhile, countries as large as China and as small as Estonia are expanding computer science education, Smith said, but in the U.S. “we’re moving, frankly, just more slowly than we need.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/01/30/obama-to-ask-congress-for-billions-of-dollars-to-help-students-learn-computer-science/

The Damage That Common Core Has Caused

 

Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars wrote an article last week with the grim prognosis that the damage caused by Common Core will be with us for years to come.

It is like a house with an underwater mortgage: The United States has invested so much in Common Core that it can’t easily get out. The investments include very large amounts spent on textbooks, computers to support the Common Core tests, and teacher training. The investment also includes some hard-to-quantify things: the squandered opportunity, the huge expenditure of political capital, the disaffection of millions of parents, and the psychological harm to students who face spending many more years living out the classroom consequences of a discredited educational experiment.

Students face those extra years of miseducation simply because there is no easy exit from Common Core. The textbooks and computers have been purchased, and the teachers have been trained. Even the states running for the exit door have a long wind-down ahead of them.

He outlines some of the outcomes we’ll suffer through even with a repeal.

• Demoting literature
• Slowing down math instruction
• Promises broken
• Cutting parents out – this in my opinion is one of the most damaging outcomes from Common Core.

Be sure to read his whole piece.
http://truthinamericaneducation.com/common-core-state-standards/the-damage-that-common-core-has-caused/

Common Core Advocates Seek to Block MA Parents from Voting on Common Core

 

A group of pro-Common Core educators and business leaders seek to keep the referendum on Common Core off the ballot in Massachusetts in November.

Newbury Port News reports:

A group of educators and business leaders wants to block a ballot initiative that seeks to reject the Common Core

re, arguing that a move to abandon the educational standards would be disastrous.

The group wants a state judge to keep the referendum off the November 2016 ballot. It says the question is vaguely worded, conflicts with the state Constitution, and never should have been certified by Attorney General Maura Healey and Secretary of State Bill Galvin.

Supporters of the ballot question call the challenge weak, and say voters should decide whether to adopt Common Core.

“They’re grasping at straws right now,” said Donna Colorio, founder of Common Core Forum, a nonprofit group that is leading the campaign. “And, by doing so, they’re trying to deprive parents and taxpayers of the right to vote on this.”

….

The ballot question asks voters to rescind a vote by the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education five years ago to adopt Common Core for math and English. The initiative says Massachusetts should instead restore curriculum frameworks that were in place prior to that vote.

Colorio and other Common Core critics say the standards are a federal takeover of education that usurps local control.

“Common Core is a top-down educational standard,” she said. “We’re being ignored as parents and teachers.”

Supporters of Common Core say it would be complicated and costly — if not impossible, at this point — to back away from the standards because the state’s 408 school districts have spent years retraining teachers, buying new textbooks and revising their curricula around them.

“We’d be undoing the work thousands of Massachusetts educators have done in the past five years,” said Linda Noonan, executive director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, which is advising the group, which has filed a lawsuit against Healey and Galvin in hopes of blocking the ballot question.

What I’m reading here is that this group is basically asking a judge to block a lawful referendum that was achieved by collecting the signatures required and went through all of the steps required by Massachusetts law to get on the ballot because this group doesn’t want to see their work undone.

That isn’t a legal argument. That’s not even a rational argument. That’s emoting. As far as the “vagueness” of the referendum question, I think the people filing the lawsuit need to look up the word vague because it seems pretty specific to me. Also how can a voter referendum, allowed by Massachusetts Constitution, conflict with the state constitution?

First, the state constitution states that government is ultimately accountable to the people.

Article VII says, “Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity and happiness of the people; and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men: Therefore the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity and happiness require it.”

They absolutely have a right to weigh in on Common Core via the ballot box as their constitution provides for voter referendums. These pro-Common Core advocates just want the power to remain with the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Here’s the language in the Constitution dealing with voter referendums:

Section 1. Legislative Procedure. – If an initiative petition for a law is introduced into the general court, signed in the aggregate by not less than such number of voters as will equal three per cent of the entire vote cast for governor at the preceding biennial state election, a vote shall be taken by yeas and nays in both houses before the first Wednesday of May upon the enactment of such law in the form in which it stands in such petition. If the general court fails to enact such law before the first Wednesday of May, and if such petition is completed by filing with the secretary of the commonwealth, not earlier than the first Wednesday of the following June nor later than the first Wednesday of the following July, a number of signatures of qualified voters equal in number to not less than one half of one per cent of the entire vote cast for governor at the preceding biennial state election, in addition to those signing such initiative petition, which signatures must have been obtained after the first Wednesday of May aforesaid, then the secretary of the commonwealth shall submit such proposed law to the people at the next state election. If it shall be approved by voters equal in number to at least thirty per cent of the total number of ballots cast at such state election and also by a majority of the voters voting on such law, it shall become law, and shall take effect in thirty days after such state election or at such time after such election as may be provided in such law.

So unless the group filing the lawsuit is saying they didn’t follow the proper procedure which they did or the Secretary of State and Attorney General wouldn’t have signed off on it, I’m unclear what is unconstitutional about this referendum. The state constitution does not restrict certain types of laws from being decided by voter referendum.

This is just an attempt at keep Massachusetts parents and concerned citizens from voting on Common Core. They are apparently afraid they will lose this referendum.

Common Core Politicizing America’s Schoolchildren

Common Core will be raising good little socialists, who are in tune with their feelings, not so much their critical thinking skills.”—Author unknown

“Common sense of the common people is more important for the health of the nation than the ideas of the philosophical elites.”—Wayne Brasler

The best documentary on the National Common Core Standards, Building the Machine, was directed by Ian A. Reid, who set out to illuminate the sixty-two percent of Americans who had not heard of Common Core in 2013.

Common Core, the brainchild and work of 30 individuals under the aegis of the Governors’ Association and with the help of almost $200 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is the tool to achieve the “fundamental transformation” of our society by adopting nationalized education “standards” that require students to find another way to reach an answer, particularly in math and science, even if the answer is wrong, justifying the incorrect answer as the path to helping students learn to think critically. The fact that the student needs to reach the right developmental age to think analytically and critically does not seem important in this newest educational scheme

The national teaching standards were adopted by 45 states without parental or teacher input, under confidentiality agreements, without public debate, untested, untried, unproven, and certainly not “internationally benchmarked” or “state led” as it is now promoted in ads.

The bait for adoption was the $4.35 billion worth of grants offered through the President’s stimulus package. States had two months to write proposals in order to be eligible for the Race to the Topgrants. Hurting for money because the economy was so depressed, 45 states applied and, in doing so, they accepted the Race to the Top Standards.

The standards, which were to become Common Core standards were not debated, “the drafts were cloaked,” there were no hearings, no testimony, just “some truncated public comments and no response to comments.”

“The Common Core standards were designed for an industrial model school,” claiming that they are “rigorous, even though they can’t tell you what makes for rigorous or non-rigorous standards.” Marc Tucker believes that they are designed for “work force development in the German model system.” Andrew Hacker, Professor Emeritus at Queens College, called Common Core standards, “a radical change from the past.”

According to the documentary, Building the Machine, “players” involved in developing, funding, adopting, and advertising national Common Core standards were:

• Achieve, Inc.
• Fordham Institute
• The National Governors Association
• Council of Chief State School Officers
• U.S. Department of Education
• Foundation for Excellence in Education
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce
• 45 governors
• Jeb Bush
• Mike Huckabee
• School Officers
• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (donated $200 million in 2012 alone to adopt Common Core)

The Validation Committee was composed of 30 people who had to sign a confidentiality agreement that they would not discuss what took place in the meetings. (Dr. Sandra Stotsky)

Five committee members, a significant percentage, did not sign the final standards and were thus “expunged from the record.” Dr. Jim Milgram said, “They are not giving the public any idea of what’s going on.” Dr. Milgram and Dr. Stotsky were the only mathematician and English language arts content specialists on the 30-person validation committee. Neither approved the standards.

Replacing basic arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication) with Constructivism, teaching children how to “construct” their own way of figuring out an answer, even if it’s the wrong answer, and replacing English literature selections with New Criticism Literary Analysis, using leftwing norms of morality and behavior, appears to be a recipe for mediocrity.

We are a diverse nation populated by individuals with different talents, ability, IQ, motivation, interests, and dissimilar childhood experiences. Some children live on farms and some in the cities, some are affluent and some are not.

College should help Americans become life-long learners, not ideological robots. Education should be about our children, not the “system.” Paul Horton, Veteran History Teacher, University of Chicago Lab Schools, thinks that the “Current policy makers see the purpose of education as training people to acquire the minimum level of skills that are required to work in a technical workplace.”

In this Race to the Top competition standards that baited many into adoption of leftist ideas of what education should be, what race exactly are we supposed to win and against whom? 

We are not trying to win any race; we are trying to pursue happiness, our American way of life, and keep our constitutional republic intact and safe, maintain our Christian heritage and faith, and reject the overt indoctrination into Islam. We do not need billionaire elitists, politicians, or Hollywood to tell us how to think, how to live, or dictate our faith.

James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas has released a new video, Common Corruption—Elitist Indoctrination, in which one of the Pearson Publishing former executives, Kim Koerber, explains the profit motive and the role of textbook publishers in our children’s education and what is the aim of Common Core.

“I hate kids. It’s never about the kids. Don’t kid yourselves…. It’s all about money.”

“Common core is really important because it needs to be some cohesion between the states and Texas keeps screwing it up over and over. Texas got upset about it and they wanted to have their founders, they wanted to pound the fathers in it. ... The dead white guys did not create this country. It was a whole bunch of different kinds of people. And yes there were women, and yes, there were people of color and yes, you need to talk about them too. But they want to talk about those dead white guys.”

Manufactured history, neglected traditions, white achievement bashing, multiculturalism, no unified language, fundamental transformation into one world collectivist government with its sustainable development

According to Kim, conservative voters don’t agree with birth control and therefore do not want their kids to learn about it. Conservatives object to the very graphic lessons on sexuality and sexual perversion, and STDs that small children would be subjected to.7

According to Kim, conservatives object to the approximate math of Common Core because they do not understand the new math, they did not study it in high school.

Kim is of the deceptive opinion that conservatives want the Constitution taught but only the parts they like. It seems to me that she wants only the parts progressives promote when she says, “Damn the Second Amendment! I don’t think personal handguns need to be on anyone except the government, the police.  What is the purpose of having a gun?”

Kim should study the history of the Holocaust and communism when only the government and the police had guns—more than 100 million innocents lost their lives at the hands of their governments.

Donald Trump spoke at the National Tea Party convention against Common Core and the “bureaucrats in Washington [who] are making a lot of money, they don’t give a damn about your kids in South Carolina…. Nobody can win when you are in favor of Common Core, it’s a disaster.”

Ted Cruz said that, as president, on his first day in office, he would instruct the Department of Education to end Common Core.

Santorum echoed the opinions of the other presidential hopefuls. “The real issue for common core is the elites in our culture who want to indoctrinate our young people into a certain way to think, a certain belief structure, and it’s all spread out through Common Core. I believe the best and safest way to maintain our values in this country is to leave it up to the people at the grass roots level.”

According to Kim Koerber, “conservatives don’t like being told what to do by people they don’t agree with.” She wants history to include lessons about the Wild West and its prostitutes.

When “Republicans want to influence what is being taught,” Koerber said, “Common Core does not put up with that.” Apparently progressives know better and we must comply with their standards. Conservatives must be told how to think. “I can’t stand it, said Kim. If they talk to me one more time about common core, about climate change not being real, I’m just gonna scream.”

The elites who push Common Core do not think much about Christianity.  Kim Koerber continued, “I am really glad that here in California, whatever religious affiliation you want to take is fine, but in Texas they want to push the Christianity.” ...“That’s way is so offensive to have these prayers in the school board.”

“Christianity is totally out of the Common Core. Yes, it is.  Totally!  It’s not a core concept at all. But then there is a mention of other religions like Islam.”

Apparently Kim Koerber does not understand that we were founded on Christianity, not Islam. Islam had made no contribution to the establishment of our country and of our success. Europeans fled the tyranny of monarchs so they could live and worship in peace.

It is very profitable for textbook companies anytime someone changes something in a textbook, said Kim. “School districts then have to adopt new books. It is all about the money.”

Koerber admits that there is a liberal bias in the Common Core standards. “So, I think the progressive bias is that the more educated you are, the better you are.” Education may be good but there are certain things that kids don’t need to know in such stark and pornographic detail and at such a tender age.

The reporter argued that kids were doing math and science just fine before Common Core; Koerber replied that critics don’t like it because the government is telling them what to do.

She continued, “The separation of church and state they don’t understand. They don’t like that. They don’t like equal rights between all groups. The voter suppression in the south is unbelievably awful.” What voter suppression? What planet BIG LIE does this woman live on?

Smearing critics that, “People who are not educated are easy to flim-flam, and that they react by fear instead of by knowledge,” Koerber is proving the progressive elitist arrogance that they are the only smart ones and they hold the academic key to knowledge. Fortunately, informed and intelligent people see through progressive stratagems and through Conformity Core indoctrination into collectivism and Islam.

Of course, now that the omnibus bill has been signed last month, the next education federalization that is augmenting Common Core comes as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), S.1177, sponsored by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) which was included in the omnibus bill. 

Deceptively named “Community Schools,” promoted by Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), these government schools will replace parental responsibilities under the guise of “early childhood learning, medical and dental screenings, and career counseling,” all of which have been done unsuccessfully under Head Start, Medicaid, and school title programs.

Jane Robbins, attorney and activist with Truth in American Education, is quoted in the New American, such “schools will be expanded to replace family and church as the center of every child’s life, offering myriad ‘services’ including mental-health programs.” She added that “Few things should alarm parents more than the prospect of the government’s assessing their child’s mental health and proceeding to fix any problem the government claims to find.”

Arne Duncan, former Secretary of Education, had boasted that these government schools will care for some American children 24/7, while all students will become global citizens and will be converted into ‘green citizens’ with UNESCO as ‘global partner’ and its World Core Curriculum.

Now we really understand why curricula around the world are relatively the same—manufactured history, neglected traditions, white achievement bashing, multiculturalism, no unified language, the fundamental transformation into one world collectivist government with its sustainable development everything.

http://canadafreepress.com/article/78397?utm_source=CFP+Mailout&utm_campaign=348aab53ec-5_20_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d8f503f036-348aab53ec-297703129

#Blizzard2016: Seven Ways Snow in Washington Is Like Our Government, It Eventually Ends in a Government Shutdown.And Obama Blames Republican For Government Shutdown?

 



So how is snow in Washington like government in Washington but more so? Here are some examples:

1. It Prevents Businesses From Operating Freely.

2. It Issues A Lot of Empty Threats (A lot).

"As far as snow accumulation maps are concerned," wrote CBS Baltimore on Thursday, "12-24 inches seems likely. Exact numbers remain uncertain at this time as the difference between seeing a few inches of snow or well over a foot … may be less than 100 miles."

3. It Runs Roughshod on the Free Market.

4. It Elicits Hyperbole at the Smallest Affront.

5. It Creates Gridlock.

6. It Impacts the Ability of Our Children to Get an Education.

7. It Eventually Ends in a Government Shutdown.

The one way snow is not like Washington? It's completely nonpartisan!
http://nation.foxnews.com/2016/01/22/blizzard2016-seven-ways-snow-washington-our-government

Fast & Furious” Gun Found In The Hideout Of This International Drug Lord

Fast & Furious” Gun Found In The Hideout Of This International Drug Lord

Fast & Furious” Gun Found In The Hideout Of This International Drug Lord

Fast & Furious” Gun Found In The Hideout Of This International Drug Lord

Fast & Furious” Gun Found In The Hideout Of This International Drug Lord

Fast & Furious” Gun Found In The Hideout Of This International Drug Lord

Fast & Furious” Gun Found In The Hideout Of This International Drug Lord

Fast & Furious” Gun Found In The Hideout Of This International Drug Lord

Fast & Furious” Gun Found In The Hideout Of This International Drug Lord

Fast & Furious” Gun Found In The Hideout Of This International Drug Lord

Fast & Furious” Gun Found In The Hideout Of This International Drug Lord

Fast & Furious” Gun Found In The Hideout Of This International Drug Lord

Fast & Furious” Gun Found In The Hideout Of This International Drug Lord

Fast & Furious” Gun Found In The Hideout Of This International Drug Lord

Fast & Furious” Gun Found In The Hideout Of This International Drug Lord

 



A .50-caliber rifle found at Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman’s hideout in Mexico was funneled through the gun-smuggling investigation known as Fast and Furious, sources confirmed Tuesday to Fox News.

A .50-caliber is a massive rifle that can stop a car or, as it was intended, take down a helicopter.
After the raid on Jan. 8 in the city of Los Mochis that killed five of his men and wounded one Mexican marine, officials found a number of weapons inside the house where Guzman was staying, including the rifle, officials said.

When agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives checked serial numbers of the eight weapons found in his possession, they found one of the two .50-caliber weapons traced back to the ATF program, sources said.

Federal officials told Fox News they are not sure how many of the weapons seized from Guzman’s house actually originated in the U.S. and where they were purchased, but are investigating.
Out of the roughly 2,000 weapons sold through Fast and Furious, 34 were .50-caliber rifles that can take down a helicopter, according to officials.

Federal law enforcement sources told Fox News that ‘El Chapo’ would put his guardsmen on hilltops to be on guard for Mexican police helicopters that would fly through valleys conducting raids. The sole purpose of the guardsmen would be to shoot down those helicopters, sources said.
The Fast and Furious operation involved federal agents allowing criminals to buy guns with the intention of tracking them.

Instead, agents from the ATF lost track of 1,400 of the 2,000 guns involved in the sting operation.
The operation allowed criminals to buy guns in Phoenix-area shops with the intention of tracking them once they made their way into Mexico.
 
The operation became a major distraction for the Obama administration as Republicans in Congress conducted a series of inquiries into how the Justice Department allowed such an operation to happen.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt after he refused to divulge documents for a congressional investigation into the matter.

This is the third time a weapon from the Fast and Furious program has been found at a high-profile Mexican crime scene.

Obama’s Shameful Legacy on Abortion

Obama’s Shameful Legacy on Abortion

Obama’s Shameful Legacy on Abortion

Obama’s Shameful Legacy on Abortion

Barack Obama delivers his last State of the Union to the United States as its president, reflecting back on his legacy as the most pro-abortion president ever to lead this nation is sobering.

He made no qualms about his adamant support of abortion before he became president, voting several times against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which would force abortionists to provide life-saving care to babies who survived abortions. His positions were, and still are, radical.

http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/obamas-shameful-legacy-on-abortion/

Obama's Last State of the Union Address: Lame Duck 'No Drama' Obama Versus Electorate Anger

Obama's Last State of the Union Address: Lame Duck 'No Drama' Obama Versus Electorate Anger

Obama's Last State of the Union Address: Lame Duck 'No Drama' Obama Versus Electorate Anger

Obama will deliver his last State of the Union address Tuesday at a moment when fear and anger seem to be driving both the American electorate and the candidates seeking to replace him in the White House.

His challenge? Communicate a message big enough to rise above the election-season vitriol.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obamas-last-state-of-the-union-will-try-to-counter-electorates-anger/2016/01/11/3371e012-b61b-11e5-a76a-0b5145e8679a_story.html

The State of the Union Is NOT Sound, Part 2: Obama's Legacy of Mass Dependency, Racial Division and Anti-Government Fury

After seven divisive years in office, President Obama is leaving America a bequest of mass dependency, racial division and anti-government fury. The “president of cool” is the king of chaos.

The ability of Americans to care for themselves has declined significantly under Obama, with the number on welfare soaring since he took office. According to U.S. census data, there was an average of 96,197,000 people enrolled in one or more means-tested programs in the fourth quarter of 2008. In 2012, the last year for which the Census Bureau has data available online, there was an average of 109,631,000 Americans in these programs.

Census data reveal Obama’s reputation as the “food stamp president” is well-earned. An average of 34,233,000 Americans were on food stamps in the fourth quarter of 2008. By 2012, the average number of Americans on food stamps in the fourth quarter had jumped to 51,471,000 — an increase of 17,238,000 people, more than 50 percent.

RELATED:

• The State of the Union Is NOT Sound: The Illusion of Obama's Economic 'Recovery'

As if things couldn’t get any worse for the country, a trend that saw a slight decline in murder rates in major metro areas from 2013 to 2014 reversed dramatically in 2015. An August 2015 report by the New York Times found that the number of murders in cities was up significantly from the same time the previous year.

Between January and August 2014 in Baltimore, 128 murders had been committed. In 2015, 215 murders had been committed there by August, the last month for which there were stats. Washington, D.C., saw 73 murders between January and August 2014. The same period in 2015 saw 105 murders in the capital. Milwaukee, which had 59 murders in the first eight months of 2014, had 104 murders between January and August of 2015, an astonishing increase of 76 percent.

Another dismal failure is Obama’s record on race relations. Despite being a president who arrived in Washington imbued with post-racial promise, the last few years saw the seeds of the Obama administration’s racial demagoguery bear bitter fruit in the form of riots in Ferguson and Baltimore and the rise of the radical Black Lives Matter movement.

http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/the-state-of-the-union-is-not-sound-part-two/

Obama's Empty Chair: The State Of The Union And Obama Taste For The Grand Teleprompter Fails

Obama's Empty Chair: The State Of The Union And Obama Taste For The Grand Empty Chair:

Obama's Empty Chair: The State Of The Union And Obama Taste For The Grand But Futile Gesture

Obama's Empty Chair: The State Of The Union And Obama Taste For The Grand But Futile Gesture

Obama's Empty Chair: The State Of The Union AndObama Taste For The Grand But Futile Gesture

Obama's Empty Chair: The State Of The Union AndObama Taste For The Grand But Futile Gesture

Obama's Empty Chair: The State Of The Union AndObama Taste For The Grand But Futile Gesture

Obama's Empty Chair: The State Of The Union AndObama Taste For The Grand But Futile Gesture

Obama's Empty Chair: The State Of The Union AndObama Taste For The Grand But Futile Gesture

As Barack Obama puts the finishing touches on his final State of the Union address, a White House teaser reveals one of his planned props for the evening: “We leave one seat empty in the First Lady’s State of the Union Guest Box for the victims of gun violence who no longer have a voice.” Blame Woodrow Wilson.

http://nation.foxnews.com/2016/01/12/obamas-empty-chair-state-union-and-presidents-taste-grand-futile-gesture

Common Core Math Standards Writer Tells Parents To Back Off From Helping Children With Homework

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the lead writers of the Common Core math standards is advising parents to avoid teaching their children how to do math problems, focusing instead on just making sure the assignments get done.

“The math instruction on the part of parents should be low,” says Jason Zimba, who is also the father of two children. “The teacher is there to explain the curriculum.”

“The most important rule as a parent is to make sure it gets done,” Zimba adds. “I may not have time to do an impromptu lesson on math but I can make sure everything is completed. It’s about managing work load and learning accountability.”

Zimba became well known to parents and teachers in 2013 when he acknowledged to the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education that Common Core is “not only not for STEM” careers “but also not for selective colleges…”

The video of his remarks set off a firestorm since Common Core champions were touting the standards’ rigor when, in fact, the writer of the actual Common Core math standards was admitting Common Core math would not prepare students for STEM careers or anything much greater than community college.

According to Kathleen Lucadamo – writing at The Hechinger Report – when she couldn’t figure out her six year-old daughter’s math homework, and had to be corrected by the first-grade teacher in how to complete the “number bonds” problems, she felt “demoralized” that she could not do first-grade math.

Hundreds of thousands of parents across the country, in fact, felt like Karen Lamoreaux of Arkansas, whose now famous video struck a nerve. Parents’ gut instincts told them there was something wrong with Common Core math – not with them. Advocates of the unpopular standards, however – many of whom have supported billions of dollars of federal funding for countless education “reforms” that have served only to further the demise of public schools in America – have tried to convince parents, teachers, and lawmakers that it’s parents who must change.

Lucadamo gives the example of Phoenix mom Kari Workman whose fifth-grader was struggling with a multi-step math problem while complaining, “Oh, this is so hard.” When Workman attempted to help her daughter with the problem, the latter snapped, “You won’t understand!”

“She was so frustrated that listening to me was not going to happen so I encouraged her to walk away from the assignment,” Workman, a teacher herself, added.

Apparently, to Common Core proponents, such intense frustration when doing math homework is a sign of “rigor” the likes of which schools in the United States have never known before.
Searching for answers, Lucadamo asked Denver teacher Lauren Fine.

“If you don’t know how to do it, ask your child to teach you, to show you how it’s done,” said Fine, who added that often the children understand how to do the problem, but parents don’t.
“In the past, I might have sent home worksheets with 40 problems, now it’s a couple of problems and the student has to show multiple ways of how they solved the problem,” she continued. “That can be frustrating for parents because they just want them to get the answer.”

Fine adds that it’s acceptable for parents to teach their children old-fashioned ways of doing math – such as carrying over numbers – but they must also stress there are newer ways to work the same problems.

However, as Common Core has placed more emphasis on “social and emotional learning,” it appears the deep frustration experienced by American children – as they perform math homework the goal of which is not to arrive at a correct answer – is often viewed as a sign they are working through some intense psychological conflict.


The one thing we can reinforce as parents is that it’s ok for children to struggle,” explains Bibb Hubbard, founder of Learning Heroes, a support group for parents. “This is hard work. It takes time and patience. It’s really painful to see them frustrated and angry. But I’m not going to tie their shoes anymore because they are 11.”

Zimba says it’s up to parents to let teachers know when they are frustrated over their children’s homework, and it’s up to schools and school districts to help them.

“When parents are frustrated, it’s important that educators listen to them, but they can’t listen unless the parents talk to them,” he said. “Venting is one thing but if you really want to solve the problem the way to do that is to start with the child’s teacher.”

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/06/common-core-math-standards-writer-tells-parents-back-off-helping-children-homework/