(East Newton R-6 Board member Lawrence Frencken delivered the following statement Thursday to the Elementary and Secondary Education Committee, during a hearing on HB 1490, The bill would prevent the implementation of Common Core Standards.)
I believe—we at the East Newton School Board understand our commitment to the community that elected us. We understand that our small rural community has no lobbying group to represent them. I believe—our community also understands that DESE has an extremely large and powerful group with which to lobby our elected officials though NSBA, MSBA, School Administration, Teachers and even our own children possibly because of the fact that School Boards are backing away from their responsibly to the community and relinquishing that power to the Superintendents who feel more bound by DESE than the school community they represent.
Common core should never have been put into schools without public knowledge and without the legislature even knowing about it. Our legislature represent us the people, the community, the public who voted them into office. We did not vote for anyone on DESE! And any organization used for informational purposes to our elected officials need that information presented back to them and the public for evaluation before implementation.
We need to learn more about “transformational education,” called the “lifeblood” of Common Core.
Will taking educational oversight out of the hands of school boards and states and giving it to the federal government really be as effective as advertised?
Sandra Stotsky, professor emerita at the University of Arkansas, actually sat on the Common Core Validation Committee, but eventually refused to validate the standards, because, she said, the math standards fail to prepare students for college-level math classes and the English standards take classic literature study off the rich menu for young minds in favor of more bland and ineffective “informational” texts and disconnected excerpts. “We are a very naive people, everyone was willing to believe that the Common Core standards are ‘rigorous,’ ‘competitive,’ ‘internationally benchmarked’
and ‘research-based.’ They are not.” “I know the Common Core buzz words, from ‘deeper learning’ and ‘critical thinking’ to ‘fewer, clearer, and higher standards.’ It all sounds impressive, but I’m worried that the students who study under these standards won’t receive anywhere near the quality of education that children in the U.S. did even a few years ago.”
Let’s have a look at Common Core Appendix B, for example, which states that “the following text samples primarily serve to exemplify the level of complexity and quality the standards required. … The choices should serve as useful guideposts in helping educators select texts of similar complexity, quality and range for their own classrooms.”
One of the exemplars is Toni Morrison novel “The Bluest Eye,” which is a disturbing tale of a daughter being raped by her father and then being befriended by a pedophile. Even more disturbing, the book portrays the rape scene from the viewpoint of the rapist.
Another exemplar text, listed for ninth graders is “Mother of Monsters,” a story in which a mother displays the virtue of “individuality” by intentionally deforming her own unborn children while pregnant.
Teachers in Newburgh, N.Y., where the Common Core exemplar “Black Swan Green” was scheduled to be used, pushed their district to return 6,000 copies of the book to the publisher, complaining that it contained “passages using inappropriate language and visual imagery that most people would consider pornographic.”
“Monopoly in education is a problem that makes it available for capture by special interest groups.”
Despite the criticism, however, more and more Common Core-influenced reforms are being created.
David Coleman, the “architect” of the Common Core Standards Initiative, has since become president of the College Board, which designs the SAT and Advanced Placement, or AP, tests – and the Common Core influence is already being seen, for example, in the College Board’s AP History Framework.
William Korach, publisher of The Report Card, broke down some of the clear political bias in the Framework, which will become mandatory for schools in the fall of 2014.
* You will not see Alexis de Tocqueville anywhere in these materials
* There’s nothing about the Pilgrims coming to America for religious freedom – it’s not discussed. … All they say is the British colonies ‘established racial rigid hierarchy.’
* There’s hardly anything at all about the Declaration of Independence, one sentence on it and no explanation.
* There’s one phrase on Washington.
* There’s none of the ideals motivating the Revolution … no discussion that we believe our rights come from God and not the Crown …
* No mention at all of Thomas Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Madison or Patrick Henry. … ‘Give me liberty or give me death’ – it’s not there.
“Instead of [portraying] Manifest Destiny as the idea of to taking the blessings of liberty to all peoples,” the new History Framework claims the move West was “‘built on the ideas of white racial and cultural superiority.’”
“There’s no discussion of free market, world-changing inventions – no Edison, no Vanderbilt, no Carnegie, no Rockefeller. No benefit in this history from electricity, railroads, steel or energy,” Korach discovered, “but there is [mandated] discussion of the Sierra Club, the Department of the Interior and [labor and community organizer] Mother Jones.”
Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute also told about the Next Generation Science Standards, or NGSS, which he called, “just as wicked and ugly as her evil stepsister, [the Common Core].”
The New York Times, Luskin said, reported the “NGSS is meant to do for science what Common Core does for English and math.” Luskin added “And there’s no need for conspiracy theories,”. “The New York Times elites openly admit NGSS was created to push evolution and global warming.”
Common Core standards are not an entirely new initiative foisted upon schools, but the latest in a long line of federal encroachments upon what has since 1789 had been considered the domain of the states. Goals 2000, for example, expanded the federal government’s role in education, which only increased with No Child Left Behind, which increased again with the Race to the Top initiative.
With Common Core, however, the federal takeover of public education is virtually complete. And that --- may just be the wakeup call Americans needed before it’s too late.
Parents who turned a deaf ear to previous fads in education are now rising up, coming out of the woodwork to say, ‘Stop! We are not putting up with Common Core!
A bunch of academic elites in D.C. are going to fix everything for us? I don’t think so!
It’s a Trojan Horse strategy for capturing the minds of future generations……..
I close with this statement made by Brigadier General Steve Richie on value, life, freedom---
The real mission of business, government, civilians and military.
Protect and preserve on environment, a climate, a system, a way of life where people can be free to reach their full potential.
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