Common Core Rotten to the Core: Scathing Analysis from American Principles Project

Little by little the stealth behind Common Core Initiative Standards (CCIS) is coming to light. Last month, in Naive, Deceived, Not Paying Attention? Controlling Your Child's Mind I said you, as a parent, cannot escape the Obama administration's Common Core through private schooling or homeschooling your children. Does creating an "Office of Non-Public Schools" that is publicly funded make sense to you? There's a big bite out of your child's learning coming your way. This program is not known as "Exceptional Core," or "High-Achieving Core." Think of "Common Core" as "Ordinary Core," or "Less Than Exceptional Core," or Pass Everyone Core."

 

Common Core eliminates local control over K-12 curriculum in math and English, instead imposing a one-size-fits-all, top-down curriculum that will also apply to private schools and homeschoolers. Source: Townhall

Missouri Education Watchdog has been vigilantly reporting on Common Core. She has received information from an Alabama parent and a video recorded live of the Alabama Department of Education Private School Licensure meeting with "private, church, and home school representatives."

One shocking lesson from this Alabama video is, if you or your school do not/does not register with Alabama's new Office of Non-Public Schools (funded publicly), your child will be "unable to attend a two or four year college/university."

Starting with a 1:43-min video:

Home schoolers MUST report attendance, grades, coursework, etc. to the local school superintendent on a regular basis

At 20:07-min into this video:

Statutory Governance of Non-Public School 

Page 4 Certificate of Licensure Upon satisfactory application, a Certificate of Licensure is to be issued to a private school pursuant [codes named in the graphic]

General Statutory Provisions Private school = include those holding certificate issued by State Superintendent of Education No K-12 scool, unless exempt, may operate without a license from ALSDE Certificate of Licensure valid two (2) years from date issued Licensure represents authority to operate educational institution in AL   

Differences in Non-Public Entities (26:31 mins in) Exempt schools may be: 

● A church/parochial school 

● A School operated by a community educational organization, or group of parents that is organized as a non-profit educational corporation 

● A private school in operation and nationally accredited continuously since July 1, 1984

A question I have, and one that Missouri Education Watchdog is working on, is how many private or home-schoolers across the country do not meet the three above-mentioned schooling that will be exempt in Alabama. If you have any feed back on this, please leave it in comments or go to Missouri Education Watchdog and do the same.

● Differences in Non-Public Entities Private Tutor ● Courses must be taught 

✓ By persons holding valid AL teaching certificate in branches of study taught 

✓ Three (3) hours/day for 140 days per calendar year 

● Must 

✓ Use English language for instruction 

✓ Report to the local superintendent of education 

● Courses 

✓ May or may not be accepted by colleges, universities, public or non-public schools

At 51:52 mins in, find "fee" information.

At 52:40 mins in, find a list of "Recognized" Institutional Accrediting agencies 

At 52:52 find Alabama State Recognized Accrediting Agencies

At 57:08 min says a list of Authorized Non-Public Entities will be published annually and cautions that:

Entities not holding a License, Deferred License or Certificate of Exemption will not have credits or diplomas recognized by any K-12, 2 year or 4 year state institution.

The Townhall article linked above refers to a study by the Pioneer Institute - American Principles Project, titled Controlling Education From the Top - Why Common Core is Bad for America. The following are snippets (all emphasis is mine):

The national Common Core State Standards (the “Standards”) were not created by the states, but rather by private organizations in Washington, DC, with lavish funding from private entities such as the Gates Foundation. The federal Department of Education then used legally suspect means – the Race to the Top competition and the promise of waivers from No Child Left Behind – to impose the Standards on the states. This effort has been accompanied by a misleading campaign to present the Standards as “state-led” and “voluntary.”

You've heard of Obama's Race to the Top, right? There are Federal grants to hand out stimulus funds to schools who walk the line and adopt Common Core along with other prerequisites to receive a "higher score" on grant applications. States want the money. States are signing up, as did my state of Oklahoma which has now had an awakening and is attempting to pull out.

Mediocre quality - The Standards, which are intended to prepare students for non-selective community colleges rather than four-year universities, are inferior to those of some states and no better than those of many others. 

Common Core's English language arts standards consist of empty skill sets that, once implemented, might not require reading skills any higher than middle-school level. Furthermore, their de-emphasis of the study of classic literature in favor of "informational texts" would abandon the goal of truly educating students, focusing instead on training them for static jobs. 

Among the many deficiencies of the mathematics standards is their placement of algebra I in grade 9 rather than grade 9, thus ensuring that most students will not reach calculus in high school and their mandate to teach geometry according to an experimental method never used successfully anywhere in the world. 

Contrary to previous claims by their creators, the Standards are not "internationally benchmarked.

State's Rights - fa'get aboud it!

...By imposing the standards on the states, and by funding their aligned assessments and imposing those on the states as well, the U.S. Department of Education is violating three federal statutes prohibiting its direction, supervision, or control of curriculum. 

In addition, because states that adopt the Standards must accept them word for word and will have little opportunity to add content...all to the denigration of parents' rights.

The most transparent administration ever:

Vague and unaccountable governance - It is not clear what governance structure will be created in the future to address issues related to the Standards. What is clear is clear that the Standards are owned and copyrighted by nongovernmental entities unaccountable to parents and students in individual states.

Has your child acted-out in school, even if just once? Been in a fight, been bullied and fought back? Your child's history will be archived for the ages:

Threats to student and family privacy - The federal Department of Education...is using the Standards and the assessments as vehicles to mandate the construction of massive state student databases.

The Department has also gutted federal student-privacy law to allow greater sharing of student with other government agencies and private entities....Partnering with the Department of Labor...seeks to build a data system that allows tracking of individual students from preschool through the workforce. 

...encompasses a worldview of the proper role of government that is greatly at odds with American founding principles.

Your state stands to receive millions if it submits:

...a $4.35 billion earmark for states "that have made significant progress" in making four education-reform objectives...

Think of it this way, your state gets paid to dumb down your children.

The massive cost of the program are found in No. 5 in the report. Read the full report here - a wealth of information for caring parents.

From Missouri Education Watchdog:

Bureaucrats will try to tell you assessments are taken from "Missouri Learning Standards" or "Alabama Learning Standards" to hide the fact that they are aligned to Common Core State Standards. 

Is a government entity dictating how/what private schools/homeschooling parents teach coming soon to your state? Private school parents and homeschool parents better watch their state education departments closely and be prepared to stop this invasion of their freedom to educate their children in the manner in which they deem appropriate.

The video is an Alabama Department of Education video, and you may not live in Alabama, but the states that are embracing this will have to come up with standards as well, and it will be easy because the Feds are telling each state what they can and cannot do - and paying them to do it. About 45 states have bellied-up to the bar.

Then there's the issue of which children will be allowed to progress to a 2 or 4-year college. Or will Common Core Standards show that your child will be better off in a trade school? Trade schools are a valuable resource, but you and your child should do the choosing

David Coleman is considered the "architect" of Common Core and like everyone in this Marxist administration, he is on a mission to put education into place to be "the engine of social justice," the engine that will fix what he considers "a massive social injustice in this country."

He [David Coleman] is on the board of directors of The Equity Project Charter School, a middle school in New York City that paid $125,000 salaries to teachers yet had a 31.3% passing rate in English in 2010-11. His alliance with unions includes praise for “organizations like the UFT in New York City and the AFT statewide.” Source: American Thinker, Dean Kalahar

 

David Coleman

 From one of my previous posts:

David Coleman, the acknowledged “architect” of Common Core Standards is busy rewriting PSATs and SATs to fall into line with his Common Core Standards on English. ...But…if states never sign-up for Common Core, or if states pull-out, if PSATs and SATs are written to Common Core Standards…what then? 

David Coleman has connections to Weather Underground bomber, William (Bill Ayers), Barack Obama and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, headed by Obama and appointed by Ayers. No, Ayers wasn’t “just a guy in the neighborhood” as Obama claimed when he was running for President. 

He and Ayers shared an office for three years, and cheated the children of Chicago out of millions of dollars of educational funding – a significant amount going to Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop, most of it to ethnic projects – not priorities like math and reading.

Perhaps you are not involved in schooling - an empty nester like me, or not yet a parent. Pass this information on to neighbors, school boards, your children so they can protect your grandchildren. This is NOT going to be an easy battle. States have already spent millions but if it isn't stopped, we will mourn the day every child in America falls behind high-achieving Asians, becomes government-indoctrinated - Christopher Columbus may be only known as the man who brought syphilis to America. Your child may be told to spend his/her life as a welder or hairdresser (and no disrespect to either) without the ability to make her/his own choice under Common Core. You won't be able to move to another state if you don't like your state's education - there is no state autonomy, or parental autonomy under Common Core Initiative Standards.

By Maggie @ Maggie's Notebook (see a reading list here for more on Common Core)