7 Major Talking Points Exposing Common Core:
1) Common Core is a Trojan Horse; It is Education by Stealth and Deception: Common Core State Standard Initiative, CCSSI, pretends to be a simple, voluntary, State-written, State-led initiative, with higher, better, more rigorous standards. But it is full of deception. It is not simple, not voluntary, not State-written or led, and does not have higher, better, more rigorous standards.
The 46 governors who signed on were coerced to do so with: (1) a bribe to share in $4.35 billion dollars grant coming from the stimulus money; (2) the possibility of getting a waiver to get out of No Child Left Behind; (3) and a threat that if they did not, they might lose their Title One money, used to help underprivileged children.
Who Really Wrote Common Core (CC)? The States had nothing to do with the writing of CC, and it is not State-led. It was written by an elite, national cartel consisting mainly of members of a group called Achieve,
who wanted to give their standards some legitimacy by getting the NGA, National Governors’ Association, and (CCSSO) Chief Council of State School Officers involved, who now hold the CC trademark and copyright.
The NGA and CCSSO are Washington D.C. based trade and lobbying groups and are not government organizations. Not all governors or State school board members belong to them and they do not truly represent the States. A true government organization cannot hold copyrights or trade-marks, thus the NGA and CCSSO cannot be used to claim that CC was State-written and State-led.
Other members of the cartel: Achieve also invited members of the FDOE, Federal Department of Education; a teacher labor union – the FTA, Federal Teachers of America; the Apollo Alliance, heavily funded by George Soros through his Tides Foundation; the Alliance for Excellent Education; the Hunt Institute; ACT (American College Testing) and the College Board, now under the leadership of David Coleman, the main writer of the team of five who put the final Standards together.
Coleman has stated that he is going to make sure that the college entrance exams, ACT and SAT, will be aligned with the CC standards. Thus CC will be affect-ing homes schooled and private schooled students as well if they want to go on to college.
Who is Writing the Assessment? Two separate groups, PARCC (Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Career) and SBAC (Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium), were given $360 million by the FDOE to write the national tests for Common Core. These groups also do not represent the States.
2) Common Core is in Violation of the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Three Federal Laws: The Tenth Amendment states that anything not “delegated” to the federal government in the Constitution, is “reserved to the States respectively or to the people.” Our Founding Fathers specifically left education out of the Constitution so that it would be left to the States, to local control and to the parents.
There are also three federal laws that prohibit the federal government from having control over the education of the states: DOE Organizational Act, 1979; General Educations Provision Act, and Elementary and Secondary Act, amended by No Child Left Behind 2002. They all say essentially the same thing: “the federal government is not to exercise any direction, super-vision, or control over the instructional materials or curri-culum, of any school or any educational institute.”
The fact that the DOE was part of the cartel when Common Core was written; it funded the two consortia that are writing the assessment; stimulus money from the federal government was used to entice the governors to sign on; waivers were given to entice them further; and threats were given if they refused to – all show that the federal government is seeking to have “direction, supervision, and control” over the instructional materials and curriculum of all schools in violation of these three laws and the 10th Amendment.
3) The Standards are Not Higher and More Rigorous: They are just the opposite.
Two experts, Dr. Sandra Stotsky and Dr. James Millgram, who are both highly acclaimed college professors, refused to sign off on the math and English/language arts standards. They said they were not any better, and actually would lower education quality.
English Lit: CC lowers the time a child used to spend reading classi-cal Literature in elementary school from 80% to only 50%, and in high school to 30%. The rest of the time is to be reading “informational text,” which is “newspeak” for politically correct indoctrination.
Parents from across the nation are reporting of the PC “informational text” that their children were assigned: articles supporting Obama Care, Obama’s energy policies, and in favor of labor unions. Children in the first grade are being taught through a book called Voices, to learn to use their “emotional” voices as they advocate for social justice causes.
CC Math is politicized: As can be seen from the picture below announcing a training for teachers, math is also being used to
promote political causes such as social justice.
One of the reasons that Dr. Milgram refused to sign off on the Common Core math standards was:
that “in large measure, it was a political docu-ment…written at a very low level and acceptable to the special interest groups involved.”
CC Math is Confusing: Parents complain of the strange, confusing, complicated forms of math, such as the “lattice method,” that are replacing simple, easy traditional multiplication and division. If parents help their children and teach them the traditional method and they get the right answer, they will be marked down. The teachers do not seem to want the correct answer; they want “the correct process.”
Math Standards are Lowered: Dr. Milgram said that Algebra will be postponed from the 8th grade to the 9th grade, leaving no room for calculus the senior year of high school, and a strange form of geometry will be taught that was so confusing, it was thrown out of the Soviet Union 50 years ago.
4) CC is Education without Representation: Our elected representatives in Congress were bypassed and had no vote, State Legislators were bypassed and had no vote, and local school boards were bypassed without any input or vote. Only the governors and State school boards knew anything about Common Core. State legislators had no knowledge or vote until much later when it was already a done deal. In California, it was a year later, August, 2011, when State legislators were asked to vote on its implementation, with never a vote on whether they actually wanted it or not, or what it actually consisted of. Most of them had no idea what Common Core really was until they heard complaints from their constituents.
5) Enormous Costs to the States: Eleven States won grant money (anywhere from $70 million to $700 million), but even they are left with an enormous cost for the rest of the money to implement CC. The estimated cost for the entire nation is $16 billion. In California, the estimated cost is $1.6 billion for implementation and $1.2 billion for the assessment. Much of the cost is for computers for every child in every classroom, teacher training and e-books.
6) Education by Big Corporations: The Bill Gates Foundation gave $150 to the cartel to write the Common Core Standards and has given another $100 million to promote it everywhere. Gates will be getting billions back when all the schools are now using computers. Another big donor is the Pearson Foundation, who is the major publisher of e-books and tests. Since schools will now be shifting entirely to e-books, and with the publishing of the new tests and assessments, Pearson will be getting $billions back as well.
7) Invasive data collection and tracking of students from cradle to grave. Obama changed the Family Education Rights Protection Act, so it is now open season on data collection on students. Over 400 points of intrusive data will be collected, such as parents’ political and religious persuasion, their income, etc. Every time a child does an assignment with the computer or takes a test, data will be collected. Data is to be collected (ideally) from birth to death. This is called Longitudinal data that can go across state lines and be sold to the highest bidder. Who knows what and where the data will be used for?
What Can We Do to Fight CC?
- Become informed, attend meetings; read books and other information on CC.
- Pass on information to others.
- Gather signatures on petitions and opt your children out of testing.
- Speak out at school board meetings. Tell them they have the right to say no to CC. (California is a local control State.)
- Write letters to the editor.
- Call in on radio shows.
- Contact your State legislator. Encourage him/her to draft legislation or be willing to support a bill putting Common Core on hold in our State.
