Common Core: "Common Core" or "Rotten to the Core" - You Decide | Eastern North Carolina Now

    13). The promoters of the Common Core standards claim they are based in research. They are not. There is no convincing research, for example, showing that certain skills or bits of knowledge (such as counting to 100 or being able to read a certain number of words), if mastered in kindergarten, will lead to later success in school. In fact, two recent studies show that direct instruction can actually limit young children's learning. At best, the standards reflect guesswork, not cognitive or developmental science. Moreover, the Common Core Standards do not provide for ongoing research or review of the outcomes of their adoption - a bedrock principle of any truly research-based endeavor. It's bad enough to set up committees to make policy on matters they know little or nothing about. But it's worse to conceal and distort the public reaction to those policies. And that's exactly what happened.

    Likewise, the standards, in many cases, were not designed by those who professionals who are most qualified to offer input. As mentioned above in the summary of Common Core, standards that were developed were not based on research, public dialogue, state input, or input from educators. The standards for Kindergarten through grade 3, for example, were designed and reviewed by 135 people, with not one of them being a K-3 classroom teacher or early childhood development expert. The National Association for the Education of Young Children, the foremost professional organization for early education in the U.S, had no role in the creation of the K-3 Core Standards. More than 500 early childhood professionals, including educators, pediatricians, developmental psychologists, and researchers (including many of the most prominent members of those fields), signed a joint statement of disapproval of the standards - The Joint Statement of Early Childhood Health and Education Professionals on the Common Core Standards Initiative. Their statement reads in part: "We have grave concerns about the core standards for young children.... The proposed standards conflict with compelling new research in cognitive science, neuroscience, child development, and early childhood education about how young children learn, what they need to learn, and how best to teach them in kindergarten and the early grades...." The statement's four main arguments are actually grounded in what science has clearly taught us about child development.... facts that any education policymaker should and need be aware of:

    1. The K-3 standards will lead to long hours of direct instruction in literacy and math. This kind of "drill and grill" teaching has already pushed active, play-based learning out of many kindergartens.

    2. The standards will intensify the push for more standardized testing, which is highly unreliable for children under age eight.

    3. Didactic instruction and testing will crowd out other crucial areas of young children's learning: active, hands-on exploration, and developing social, emotional, problem-solving, and self-regulation skills - all of which are difficult to standardize or measure but are the essential building blocks for academic and social accomplishment and responsible citizenship.

    4. There is little evidence that standards for young children lead to later success. The research is inconclusive; many countries with top-performing high-school students provide rich play-based, nonacademic experiences - not standardized instruction - until age six or seven.

    14). Several states are concerned about the effect of public-private partnerships on true capitalism (competition and efficiency) and on individual representation. The emphasis that Common Core puts on "job placement" puts the focus of our education system primarily on the economy and not on the well-being of our children. Evidence for this lies in the fact that many education experts point out there is no evidence to support the theories upon which the Common Core experiment is built.

    What is a public-private partnership? What purposes were they supposedly created to serve? Public-private partnerships (PPP) describe a government service or private business venture which is funded and operated through a partnership of government and one or more private sector companies. They really amount to economic control and they are a key component to the design of a collectivist system. (See Dr. Steven Yates, professor of Philosophy at the Mises Institute; Dr. Yates often speaks and writes about the undermining of our free enterprise economy).

    15). At its "core," Common Core is a social engineering experiment. Common Core's lead architect, David Coleman, explains that the initiative is all about standards. It's about preparing students for a competitive work force in this developing age. But just as we can understand a program or policy by looking at its architect (Ezekiel Emmanuel and the IPAB, or "death panel" created by Obamacare; Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood; Obama and the administration's hostility to religion; Adolf Hitler and the final solution, etc), a look at Coleman's background is equally enlightening.

    David Coleman says he believes in the value of a liberal-arts education. The problem is nobody asked what a liberal-arts education means to him. Reading his background puts new meaning to the word "liberal" in liberal arts. American Thinker did an expose on him. Coleman lives in trendy Greenwich Village and was educated at Yale, Oxford, and Cambridge universities (all liberal). He has never been a classroom teacher and wants to replace traditional subjects with broad learning. He believes there is "a massive social injustice in this country" and that education is "the engine of social justice." His upbringing is certainly in line with this progressive mindset. His mother and greatest influence, Elizabeth Coleman, president of Bennington College in Vermont, is of the view that school curriculum should be designed to address "political-social challenges." She emphasizes an "action-oriented curriculum" where "students continuously move outside the classroom to engage the world directly." In short: indoctrination through propaganda in education as the vehicle for social transformation.

    Mrs. Coleman founded a social justice initiative - the Center for the Advancement of Public Action (she called it a "secular church") - "which invites students to put the world's most pressing problems at the center of their education." She was a professor of humanities at the far left New School for Social Research, which was begun by progressives in 1932 and modeled itself after the neo-Marxist social theory of the Frankfurt School. She fights for "social values," and a "secular democracy," saying "fundamentalist ...values (are) the absolutes of a theocracy."

    The foundational philosophy of Common Core is to create students ready for social action so they can force a social-justice agenda. Common Core is not about students who actually have a grasp of the intricate facts of a true set of what E.D. Hirsch would call "core knowledge." Common Core is about, as David Feith would say "an obsession with race, class, gender, and sexuality as the forces of history and political identity." Nationalizing education via Common Core is about promoting an agenda of Anti-capitalism, sustainability, white guilt, global citizenship, self-esteem, affective math, and culture sensitive spelling and language. This is done in the name of consciousness raising, moral relativity, fairness, diversity, and multiculturalism.

    Common Core is not actually about standards, it's about gaining control over the education system in a futile attempt to create a Progressive utopia using the important sounding academic umbrella of "standards." But ask yourself, haven't educators always had standards, guidelines, or benchmarks to guide curriculum? What is different all of sudden? The difference is that we have an administration that has put progressive secularism at the top of its agenda. All we need to do is connect the dots.

    Is there a rush to put a stop to this initiative? YES. The standards are set to go into effect this year. If states don't opt out, then they turn their backs on one of their absolute most critical responsibilities - the exercise of a sovereign STATE function in the education of their children. It isn't acceptable to pawn this responsibility off on the federal government and it is offensive, in light of the Tenth Amendment, to accept federal bribe money to implement its instrumentalities of indoctrination. Education involves state values and unique demographics, but overall demands that parents' reasonable expectations are rewarded with an education that is as exceptional as possible and one that isn't described as a "Race to the Middle." In North Carolina, for example, our state constitution puts great emphasis on the importance of a good education. Finally, If enough states don't resist the initiative, then College Boards will alter the SAT to reflect the Common Core standards and college admissions will be skewed towards this fundamental transformation of American education. The official dumbing down of Americans will have taken place.

    Five states so far have dropped out of Common Core - Nebraska, Alaska, Texas, Virginia, and Minnesota - and now Kansas and Oklahoma are taking measures to drop out. Oklahoma just passed a bill (House Bill 1989) which would prohibit the sharing of its students' personal information. And Indiana has recently passed legislation that puts a pause on the implementation of Common Core in the state so that legislators, parents, teachers and school boards can have the time they were denied previously, to actually vet and analyze the Common Core agenda. Indiana's Governor Pence, skeptical of Common Core, says the standards are less rigorous than Indiana's prior standards and adopting them would mean giving up too much power over the setting of standards.

    References:

    Heritage Foundation Conference (panel discussion) on Common Core: "Putting the Brakes on Common Core" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=P40GaKlIwb8 (Panelists included Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation, Jim Stergios of Pioneer Institute, Ted Rebarber of Accountability Works, Heather Crossin of Hoosiers Against Common Core, and Christel Swasey. Michele Malkin was a guest speaker)

    Bob Luebke, "Common Core Will Impose an Unproven One-Size-Fits-All Curriculum on North Carolina," Civitas Institute, March 18, 2013. Referenced at: http://www.nccivitas.org/2013/common-core-imposes-one-size-fits-all-curriculum/

    Bob Luebke, "Common Core: Worse Than You Think," Civitas Institute, April 11, 2013. Referenced at: http://www.nccivitas.org/2013/common-core-worse-than-you-think/

    Dean Kalahar, "Common Core: Nationalized State-Run Education," American Thinker, April 12, 2013. Referenced at: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/04/common_core_nationalized_state-run_education.html

    Mallory Sauer, "Data Mining Students Through Common Core, New American, April 25, 2013. Referenced at: http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/15213-data-mining-students-through-common-core

    Rachel Alexander, "Common Core Curriculum: A Look Behind the Curtain of Hidden Language," Christian Post, April 18, 2013. Referenced at: http://www.christianpost.com/news/common-core-cirriculum-a-look-behind-the-curtain-of-hidden-language-92070/

    Data Mining, on the Glen Beck Show - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NjqOBEc3HU

    Valerie Strauss, " A Tough Critique of Common Core on Early Childhood Education," The Washington Post, January 29, 2013. Referenced at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/29/a-tough-critique-of-common-core-on-early-childhood-education/

    Reality Check: The Truth About Common Core - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdiCGgxj58

    Publisher's note: Diane Rufino has her own blog, For Love of God and Country. Come and visit her. She'd love your company.

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