Friday, May 17, 2013

Common Core: the new IRS (you know, for kids!)

Mark Levin thinks it's time to kill the IRS.

I can't say I disagree with him. But what are we going to do about the P-20W database that will be monitoring our politics, religion, and school scores from preschool through post-doctorate work thanks to the new Common Core?

Thanks to Common Core, another government agency will have all our information in an easy-to-search-by-key-words-like-patriot database. 

What's more, that database may be hacked by companies seeking to profit from the production of educational apps and the like.

The following interview excerpt is out of Utah, but as it's in reference to requirements to get out of No Child Left Behind, it's safe to assume P-20W is being implemented nationwide. Or just look it up on the education.gov site.

"Libertas Institute: Do you think it’s fair to refer to Common Core as a centralization of education policy? If so, why is it troublesome? 
Oak Norton: Absolutely, it’s a centralization of policy. It’s also a problem because of what the centralization is allowing the government to do. As a requirement to get out of No Child Left Behind, Utah had to set up a database (which was done in January 2012) called the P-20W database. This stands for preschool through grade 20 (post-doctorate) through into the workforce. So this data collection, that the federal government wants on all of our children, is set up as part of Common Core. It contains over 500 data points, including things like blood type, religious affiliation, dental records, what time you get on the bus, and so on. There are a whole lot of things that the federal government doesn’t need to know" (emphasis mine).


Read the entire interview for more information on how the new national education standards financed by Microsoft's Bill Gates and approved by UNESCO (the UN's education branch) are another step on the ever-present march toward global education standards and complete global control over education. I know, I know, I may need to find out where I've misplaced my tin foil. 

It sounds crazy, and yet... with all that's going on with the IRS and the press intimidation, 'crazy' is the new 'for real.'

For those of us who believe education ought to be as locally controlled as possible and include lots of parental input, Common Core and the P-20W database look like the Death Star. Unless the IRS is listening in to this blog post, in which case YAY FOR MORE GOVERNMENT CONTROL OVER MY KIDS' EDUCATION! I LOVE WHAT THEY'VE DONE WITH THE PLACE SO FAR! PLEASE, SPEND MORE OF OUR TAX DOLLARS ON EDUCATION. YOU KNOW, FOR KIDS.

For the rest of this very tall infographic (the actual ratings), go here

Common Core will indeed be expensive for schools: 

  • The Pioneer Institute estimates that over a seven-year timespan, CCSSI compliance will require outlays of $1.2 billion for new assessments, $5.3 billion for professional development, $2.5 billion for instructional materials, and $6.9 billion for technology infrastructure and support.
  • This totals to $15.8 billion, $10.5 billion of which will be upfront, one-time costs. 
-National Center for Policy Analysis

How effective is Common Core, anyway? 
"Dr. Jim Milgram was the only professional mathematician on the validation committee for the math standards, and he refused to sign off on them because he said they would put us two years behind the Asian countries by 7th grade (among other reasons). On the English Side, Dr. Sandra Stotsky, who provided Massachusetts with the best English Language Arts standards in the country, said that Common Core’s ELA standards would only allow students to really be high school ready, not college ready." 
-Oak Norton, an education activist in Utah and founder of Utahns Against Common Core and Agency Based Education
To sum up, Common Core 

  • institutes a new, highly hackable government database of intensely personal information about every single human in America 
  • costs an arm and a leg to implement 
  • puts us behind the Asian countries in math
So why on Earth are we even considering Common Core, let alone adopting it en masse?

 This is why: 
"The federal government should consider expanding
its authority to address longstanding and persistent issues of
inequity in school finance, including new enforcement steps
that stop short of withdrawing funding from students most
in need. Steps that might be considered include enforcement
mechanisms derived from other areas of federal civil rights
law; these all have advantages and disadvantages that should
be carefully considered. Enforcement with respect to school
finance equity should provide a safe harbor for systems
achieving equity in student outcomes regardless of input equity."
-The Equity and Excellence Commission


As my AP history and government teachers always said... Follow the Money.

"Billions in federal funding was used to create incentives for states to adopt the standards." -National Center for Policy Analysis
"The truth is Governors were lured with Stimulus Money and Race to the Top grants and points from the federal government. Many Governors truly believe they were part of a “consensus” for national standards. However, Common Core was not state-led." -NH Families for Education: "Common Core is a Trojan Horse"
Indeed, it was not state-led.
"Common Core proponents often claim that the standards were developed by the states, as if it was a bottom-up, citizen-led initiative. This is not true. The Common Core was developed by the National Governor's Association, a private organization, with funding from the Gates Foundation. There was no public debate about what the standards should be.
States adopted the Common Core as part of the "Race to the Top" initiative from the Department of Education. States competed for education dollars by showing how they would change their education system. To compete for the Race to the Top funds, states had to agree to adopt the Common Core standards before they even knew what the standards would be.
"It's the most top-down thing I've ever heard of in education," Carlsson-Paige said. "It's hard to believe, in a democratic country like this, this could've actually happened." -Dr. Nancy Carlsson-Paige, an expert on early childhood education, told The Christian Post
The specific standards were further developed in part by the EEC, The Equity and Excellence Commission, a federal commission including representatives from the White House and the Department of Education. That brings us to our wonderful United States president who wants our education system to be more like Germany's.

During President Obama’s last State of the Union address, he announced that he wanted to have a German-style education system here in America. In Germany, early in elementary school they start channeling children into the tracks that they think would be most appropriate for them to go into. So by the time you’re in junior high or high school, you may have lost the ability to change what your future career path is, based on decisions that were made “for your benefit” by the government. - Oak Norton
2020 Vision Roadmap: A Pre-K Through Post-Secondary Blueprint for Educational Success
President Obama's 2020 Vision Roadmap contains three main objectives: 
1. Control education (from compulsory preschool on up)
2. Compel State into resource distribution (intra-district wealth redistribution)
3. Directly remedy any failure to comply (withhold funds)
Nov. 6, 2012 – Convened a forum and spoke on Capitol Hill for the Opportunity to Learn Agenda which seeks a “federal right” to learn by giving schools equal resources.
Congressman Fattah gave the closing remarks.
The Opportunity to Learn Agenda, via Congressman Fattah, called for the creation of a commission, which is now the Equity and Excellence Commission. 
Note: All Governors now have a Commission called the Education and Excellence Commission. Utah’s was created in 2010. Our research concludes that they were created to fulfill the requirements of the federal EEC. 
-From NH Families for Education: "Common Core is a Trojan Horse"
Does "federal right" to learn ring any bells? It's the same argument about a "federal right" to health care that brought us Obamacare. At least President Obama is consistent, right? 

Here is a summary of the Vision Roadmap prescriptions from its own introduction:
The prescriptions include implementing a compulsory system of universal pre-K to grow a robust pipeline that will allow the U.S. to stay on its post-secondary trajectory once attained. That includes strengthening academic and social supports at every stage of the educational pipeline, ensuring equal access to the human and material resources needed to develop and sustain a serious culture of learning, creating multiple pathways for post-secondary attainment and aligning each stage in the educational pipeline with the next placing a deliberate focus on post-secondary attainment. In light of the limitations of the current U.S. educational system, a plan to achieve the 2020 goal MUST be powerful and broad enough to give all students an opportunity to learn.
..........................................
Sorry, I was just having a flashback to The Life of Julia (I couldn't link the actual page because it's been removed from barackobama.com, but here's a news story about it). "Social supports at every stage."

After the break: Find out how Common Core goes around checks and balances, creates a new federal entitlement to bankrupt states, and also learn how YOU can make a difference.


The Equity and Excellence Commission, EEC, presented their report and compendium to Education Secretary Duncan. It's long, but here's a key part:
Under “Governing for Equity,” the EEC’s report reads:
“The current system, in which policy and resource decisions are made across 15,000 local school boards, 50 state legislatures and state education agencies, plus three branches of the federal government, is not serving national goals of equity and excellence and is not meeting the needs of far too many children in too many communities.
“Historically, our approach to local control has often make it difficult to achieve funding adequacy and educational equity. Local authority will inevitably remain substantial, but it should operate within a clearer stronger framework that aligns local decisions with state polities and with national commitments to equity and excellence.
“To ensure that every child receives what he or she needs to succeed in school, we require a systemic means of cutting through the red tape that ties up funding streams and personnel. Governance reforms must ensure coordination and cooperation across federal, state and local agencies. This alignment is critical, for example, when it comes to providing health care and social services to students in our schools."


Interpretation: Checks and balances are too cumbersome and are interfering with "funding adequacy and educational equity." Screw 3 branches of government, 50 state legislatures and education agencies, and 15,000 local school boards! All those people and their personal opinions are gumming up the works! We need equity and we need it now! Common Core gives us a framework that aligns (look for this word on the official CCSS page: aligns) local decisions with state policies and with national commitments to equity and excellence.


On the about page, you can see that the Equity and Excellence Commission means well:

PURPOSE OF THE COMMISSION
The purpose of the Commission is to collect information, analyze issues, and obtain broad public input regarding how the Federal government can increase educational opportunity by improving school funding equity. The Commission will also make recommendations for restructuring school finance systems to achieve equity in the distribution of educational resources and further student performance, especially for the students at the lower end of the achievement gap. The Commission will examine the disparities in meaningful educational opportunities that give rise to the achievement gap, with a focus on systems of finance, and recommend appropriate ways in which Federal policies could address such disparities. 
MEMBERS
The Commission is comprised of 27 members from a range of backgrounds including education, law, civil rights, tax, finance, government, and business. The Commission also has 7 ex officio members representing the Department of Education and the White House.
All they really want is to make it so poor kids have the same education opportunities as rich kids, right? But is forced sharing the best way to do that? We all know that the inner city schools struggle more to meet national standards in testing than do schools in wealthy districts. We also all know that the official dollar amount being spent per child is not actually reaching students, especially in these poorer districts where corrupt bureaucrats seem to eat money at all three square meals each day. It's starting to feel a bit like sending money to your cousin in Africa, knowing full well that the postman or customs officer who rifles through the package first will leave your cousin with the rubber band that held the bills. This is a serious problem. Let's see how the Commission suggested the federal government solve it. 

EEC member Linda Darling-Hammond, wrote in 2012: ‘The Federal Government should compel states to review Inter- and Intra- school resource distribution using established indicators. States that fail to comply would be subject to withdrawal of Federal funds and the Federal Government would have right to directly remedy the problem.’
Oh boy. If we can't share properly, the Big Brother will take and share by force.
"Common Core reads like Medicaid. After the federal money to implement it is gone after 2014, it will have the potential to bankrupt states." 
-NH Families for Education: "Common Core is a Trojan Horse"
He who buys decides. The federal government is buying. And there's nothing you can do to change its mind.

Oh, except for this:






If you think homeschooling exempts you from caring about this, you're wrong. This will affect everyone.

Props if you got the movie reference to The Hudsucker Proxy in the title.


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Posted by Katrina L. Lantz at 9:36 PM
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Katrina, thank you for this information. Scary!

Too bad we don't have the guts to pass school vouchers, when everyone knows it works! It really just makes me sick when I think about the greatest country on earth sacrificing our children's future.

-Martha

May 18, 2013 at 1:04 PM
Katrina L. Lantz said...

Thank you for your comment, Martha! I'm scared by this, too. I have two sisters who are switching from public schools to home school because of Common Core. This huge federal insertion into local schools means nobody will be exempt from the propaganda and monitoring of the federal government, who has already proven itself untrustworthy with such powers.

I hope many will join the bi-partisan fight against Common Core!

May 18, 2013 at 7:55 PM
Anonymous said...

Common core, vouchers are all tied together. It is all work force training-Agenda 21. Once control is taken over public schools and public money is used for private education, control will be over the private system too and they will have it all. Vouchers will pull money away from the public schools and then taxes will rise. It will become the schools fault, not government. Look deep at the whole issue. It is all tied together-a grand plan that has been in the works for the last 70 years.

June 15, 2013 at 11:26 AM
Anonymous said...

The most startling find of all.....is that this tied together grand plan that as been in the works for 70 years has been created by the conservatives, Republican Party. Common Core wants us to focus on the "what" and "how"......instead of the "who" and "why"!!!! Wake up!! Common core in itself, nationalized standards, is not a bad thing. Conservatives are now spinning against themselves!
Good thing, I guess.... They will get no place.

June 17, 2013 at 4:00 AM
Katrina L. Lantz said...

To Anonymous, you might want to check out some of my other articles on Common Core, which show with extensive documentation that the people with the plan were actually United Nations-lovers, not Republicans. There are, unfortunately, Republicans who are so "moderate" they've gone over to the other side, but for the most part Republicans do not support the UN Agenda 21 or Millennial Goals from whence Common Core originates.

What you are seeing is an unholy marriage of Big Government and Big Corporations. Contrary to popular liberal belief, Republicans are not for Big Corporations. We are for job-creators, the majority of which are actually small corporations, the kind Mitt Romney was referring to when he said, "Corporations are people, my friend." No, Republicans detest the political influence of special interests as much as you do. We just fear Big Government more, since companies come and go but government entitlement programs and bureaucracies are forever.

http://www.rightspeak.net/2013/05/common-core-direct-ties-to-agenda-21.html

http://www.rightspeak.net/2013/05/video-karen-bracken-talks-common-core.html

June 21, 2013 at 5:16 PM

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