Deceit once again falls upon those behind the implementation of everything related to the Common Core Standards. Most recently released information about the new SAT test rules and the AP History and Science classes to be taught have some of this country’s highest ranking professors hair standing on end.
The fact the textbooks are already brushing over any American History prior to 1865 is disgusting enough. Ever since we learned about this I have said their objective in doing this is to “remove” our upcoming generation’s loyalty to this country. How can you have any loyalty to a country you know nothing about or what you are told is all negative in relationship to the founders and how and why things were carried out as they were.
David Coleman and Sue Pimental were the writers of the Common Core Standards for English Language (ELA). They are actually called “The Common Core Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History, Social Studies, Science, & Technical Subjects.” This covers everything except Math and the Common Core Math Standards takes care of that.
David Coleman, the non-educator and the man Bill Gates (eugenist) found to use as the lead dummy in the push for the Common Core Standards is once again out there to take credit for not actually doing any work. No one is really clear as to what Coleman’s role was in the writing of the Standards since we know the actual lead writers were Sue Pimental (ELA) and Jason Zimba (Math). Coleman was on the team and seems to for some reason or other, to have been given the honor of being in name only “the architect” of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.
Having never taught a day of any type of education classes in his life, he has also taken a page from Obama’s book and never produced curriculum vitae for public viewing, but he does like to address the teaching of our children as if it is a very minor issue. While Bill Gates, Jeb Bush and their cronies continue to tell parents we need to give our children an education for the 21st century, they continue to give us trash curriculum and individuals who know nothing about education.
Zimba to his fame, in 2008 co-authored a paper with David Coleman about standards for the Carnegie Commission.
Pimentel’s name to fame is in 2006 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2011, Achieve paid Pimentel’s company, Sue Pimentel, Inc., Hanover, NH 03755, for “consulting.” Pimentel’s presence on the CCSS ELA committee and her close relationship with Achieve raise questions about the exact process for selecting work group members (and who did the selecting). Given that Achieve has an established set of “common benchmarks” for framing CCSS dating back to 2004, and given the presence of those “leading governors” on Achieve’s board, one can conclude that there was no objective (much less publicized) means of selecting CCSS work groups.
Pimentel is also the Vice-Chair and on the Executive Committee of the National Assessment Governing Board of which meets quarterly to make decisions including the subjects NAEP measures and the frameworks of assessments that students eventually take.
(It might interest my Florida readers that Florida Senator Anitere Flores is also serving on this board. Flores seems to be popping up everywhere as she is the Chief Executive Officer/President of Doral College, a private university run by the state’s largest for-profit charter school management company, Academica Charter School Consortium (Rep. Fresen). Senator Flores had initially stated in accepting the position at Doral she would not run for re-election in 2012, but I guess she changed her mind because she is still in both positions along with sitting on Jeb Bush’s foundation FEE.)
I see a great deal of manipulative cronyism going on.
Unfortunately it appears giving our children an education in the 21st century entail’s using Hitler “outcome based education” to dumb them down and at the same time take away all true and correct History information regarding America and filling their heads with Global Warming lies through Science. All of this and the planning continue to be presented by men and women who have no idea what they are talking about except as “yes” men. Non Educator’s All!
Coleman, Ann-Margaret Michael (Coleman’s former assistant and current operations manager for Student Achievement Partners), and Jason Zimba were the founding board members of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst, a lobbying advocacy organization for “standards driven” educational reform. Coleman’s tenure on the board of StudentsFirst ended when he joined the College Board in October 2012.
Michelle Rhee’s group after having caused the testing scandal in D.C. while she was serving as the superintendent of schools went on to support Jeb Bush and his push in the total endorsement of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) through Student’s First.
Student Achievement Partners was founded by Coleman’s friend’s Sue Pimentel (leader of the ELA team) and Jason Zimba (leader on the Mathematics writing team).
Don’t you just love these “touchy feely” names they give these organizations to make you think they are really smart and care about your children? StudentsFirst, Student Achievement Partners, and Step Up For Students. And the way they all circle around to being on all these boards together.
We already know that polls increasingly show that as more Americans learn about the Common Core standards, they don’t like what they see. Hopefully, Americans will feel the same way as they learn more about how the new Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. History exam will decimate the teaching of traditional American history, turning it into a leftist view of an America that is based on identity politics rather than a Constitution meant to protect the rights of individual freedoms.
Conservative commentator Stanley Kurtz, a contributing editor for National Review Online, wrote about the secretive manner in which the AP U.S. History exam was rolled out as well as the significance of this new exam.
“We are witnessing a coordinated, two-pronged effort to effectively federalize all of American K-12 education, while shifting its content sharply to the left,” Kurtz states.
He explains that while the College Board under Coleman has put on a public display of a lengthy “framework” for the new AP U.S. History exam, that framework actually contains only a few sample questions.
“Sources tell me, however, that a complete sample exam has to be released, although only to certified AP U.S. History teachers,” Kurtz continues. “Those teachers have been warned, under penalty of law and the stripping of their AP teaching privileges, not to disclose the content of the new sample AP U.S. History exam to anyone.”
WHAT? Why all the secrecy if everything pertaining to the CCS are so good and are going to create the world’s top 21st century technical guru’s. But then again, this is the same type of behavior we saw prior to the original release of the CCS with a blackout of all information relating to them.
Coleman’s major achievement of keeping Common Core from public and media scrutiny is extraordinary considering that the standards were developed by three private D.C. organizations: the National Governors Association (NGA), the Council for Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and progressive education company Achieve Inc. All three organizations were privately funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with your tax dollars and none of these groups are accountable to parents, teachers, students, or taxpayers in general.
In a March, 1997 article published by Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D. it states, “in March 1996 then N.C. Gov. Hunt and five other governors along with six CEO’s adopted a policy statement at the National Education Summit then calling for the states to establish internationally competitive standards, assessments tools and accountability systems within two years”. (Notice the presence of “leading governors” on the Achieve, Inc., board allows one to call Achieve a “state-led” organization and by the same token, one might also call Achieve a “business-led” organization since its board is also comprised of “business leaders.”)
It went on to say “the policy statement also indicated an entity called “Achieve” would be established to “measure and report each state’s annual progress in setting those standards.” Although the Standards would be “voluntary”, one of the CEO’s, IBM’s Lou Gerstner, Jr., said his company is the largest in North Carolina and companies could easily threaten not to open plants in states that didn’t comply”.
CORPORATE EXTORTION OVER EDUCATION STANDARDS? Well, we saw that come true in 2013 with the letter from CEO Tillison of ExxonMobil to the governor of PA Tom Corbett. Play our game or we’ll pull up our pants so to speak and leave your state. Goodbye!
In 2001, the Achieve board of directors included six governors and CEOs of six corporations. All six corporations were connected to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group now known for its model legislation in favor of the privatization of public education and its decision to reverse its anti-CCSS stance.
It certainly serves pro-CCSS purposes to conceal the “business-led” element of the governor-CEO, Achieve. Achieve is nothing more than a little ALEC and we certainly could have and should have called the CCSS “business-led”, but that would certainly not have been as effective as deceiving the populous with “state-led”.
In 2004 Achieve, Inc. created ADP, American Diploma Project which stated they had done two years of research to create the groundbreaking report entitled “Ready or Not: Creating a High School Diploma That Counts. This is where benchmarking came from and with only 2 years of research but – ADP was formed and published this 2 years of research the same year. ?????
Quick note: Be careful when seeing former Governor Pawlenty’s name up for President or VP – he has been knee deep into the NGA (2008 Chair), CCSS, Achieve and ADP from their inception. In 2006, Pawlenty made the statement “the era of small government is over… I’m a market person, but there are certain circumstances where you’ve got to have government put up the guardrails or bust up entrenched interests before they become too powerful …the government has to be more proactive and more aggressive.”
In 2008 then Gov. Pawlenty led the National Governors Symposium in N.C. with former N.C. Gov. Jim Hunt. The NGA produced that year:
High, rigorous standards are the foundation of a strong education system. Content standards specify the knowledge and skills that students need at each grade level. These standards must be supported by an aligned and clearly articulated system of curriculum, assessments, teacher preparation and professional development, textbook selection and appropriate supports for students.
And by the way, Pawlenty in 2008 was also the vice-chair of the Achieve board of directors and in 2009, he became co-chair. In 2009, Achieve received $20.9M from the Gates Foundation, $2M from the Carnegie Foundation, and a combined $2.6M from five ALEC corporations (GE, Prudential, Nationwide, Lumina, and State Farm). There are many questionable actions on this one’s part.
And if you know nothing about Jim Hunt, Jeb Bush’s new best friend, go here and scroll down to “Truth About Former Governor Jim Hunt.
There is still no official information about who selected the individuals to write the Common Core standards. None of the writers of the Math and English Language Arts standards have ever taught Math, English, or Reading at the K-12 level. In addition, the Standards Development Work Groups did not include any members who were high school English and mathematics teachers, English professors, scientists, engineers, parents, state legislators, early childhood educators, and state or local school board members.
“This is clearly an effort to silence public debate over these heavily politicized and illegitimately nationalized standards,” writes Kurtz. “If the complete sample test was available, the political nature of the new test would become evident. Public scrutiny of the sample test would also expose potential conflicts between the new exam and existing state standards.”
Another deception observed by Kurtz is the College Board’s claim that the highly controlled new framework for AP U.S. History can be adapted according to the preferences of individual states, school districts, and teachers. Of course, if they want their students to pass the Common Core-aligned tests, their best bet is to choose Common Core-aligned textbooks and lesson plans, which mean content will be coming from those.
As I have mentioned previously, even Charter schools are Common Core aligned. Charter schools supported by Hillsdale College and Great Heart Charter Management will tell you they are providing your child with a Classical education. Now how can that be since the curriculum and textbooks they are using are Common Core aligned?
You just cannot have it both ways. Seems everyone has gotten adapt to “double-speak”.
While it is true that the new AP framework allows teachers to include their own examples, the framework “also insists that the examples must be used to illustrate the themes and concepts behind the official College Board vision.” Now we are back to square one.
Kurtz observes:
The upshot is that James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and the other founders are largely left out of the new test, unless they are presented as examples of conflict and identity by class, gender, race, ethnicity, etc. The Constitution can be studied as an example of the Colonists’ belief in the superiority of their own culture, for instance. But any teacher who presents a full unit on the principles of the American Constitution taught in the traditional way would be severely disadvantaging his students. So while allowing some minor flexibility on details, the new AP U.S. History framework effectively forces teachers to train their students in a leftist, blame-America-first reading of history, while omitting traditional treatments of our founding principles.
In regard to the Science Standards, John Casey, former White House space program advisor, consultant to NASA Headquarters, and space shuttle engineer has written an article “Teaching Our Children Bad Science” and gives five negatives to the CCS Science:
These areas for teaching our children are so deeply flawed as to raise concerns about how other sections in the proposed curriculum standards were developed.
Use of Invalid and Disproved Science
Standards Are Based on False Assertions of Mankind’s Impact on Climate Change
Specific Standards Sections on Climate Should Be Removed Completely
These Climate Standards Do Not Reflect the Most Important Factors in Climate Change
At the end of 2013, Citizens for Objective Public Education, Inc. (COPE) filed suit in federal court against the Kansas State Board of Education and the Kansas State Department of Education to enjoin implementation of science standards designed for all students in the US.
The Complaint alleges that the Kansas Board’s adoption on June 11, 2013, of A Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards (the F&S) “will have the effect of causing Kansas public schools to establish and endorse a non-theistic religious worldview” in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Rather than objectively informing children about these questions in an age-appropriate manner, the Science Standards lead them “to answer the questions with only materialistic/atheistic answers.”
This indoctrination is driven by the use of a concealed Orthodoxy (or doctrine) called methodological naturalism or scientific materialism. The Orthodoxy requires that explanations of the cause and nature of natural phenomena may only use natural, material or mechanistic causes, and must assume that teleological or design conceptions of nature are invalid.
Just the very fact that ever since our children began being filled full of “Global Warming” a common practice has been to refer to nature as Mother Earth or Gaia. If you remember two years ago Earth Day was changed to Mother Earth Day – they are teaching our young children to worship the earth and that the earth and animals are more important than humans. Brainwashing!
The Gaia hypothesis, named after the Greek goddess Gaia is also known as the Gaia theory or Gaia principle, which proposes that organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a self-regulating, complex system that contributes to maintaining the conditions for life on the planet. Topics of interest include how the biosphere and the evolution of life forms affect the stability of global temperature, ocean salinity, oxygen in the atmosphere and other environmental variables that affect the habitability of Earth.
Gaian’s of which they call themselves have infiltrated every level of power within the United Nations. This is part of the UN’s Sustainable Development planned teaching – “The goal aims to have the UN recognize the Earth as a living entity that humans have sought to “dominate and exploit” —” The direct opposite of what the Bible teaches, namely, that man is to dominate the earth and all creatures on it.
If you go to this link you will see Gaia is depicted all the way from a monstrous woman covered in greenery, to a sexy woman laying in the forest, to a medieval goddess floating on air to a pregnant women showing the earth in her womb – let your imagination fly when you are depicting lies.
Absolutely nothing about the Common Core Standards, College Board, NGA, CCSO, Achieve, United Nations, Bill Gates, Jeb Bush, Bill Clinton, Al Gore and all their cronies is good for our children.
And don’t forget the changes to the SAT’s! The College Board has chosen to release information in a less than straightforward manner, as usual. David Coleman has learned well how to “double-speak” information especially when it pertains to our children. The “sleight of hand” statements are carefully stated using those politically correct words, but there does exist a document entitled, “Specifications for the Redesigned SAT.” I guess we will just have to wait until March 2015 for all the gory details. To understand some of the things going on with the SAT’s you can go here.
Two last things – always remember the actual motives behind the implementation of Charter schools – they carry a large share of lies and scandals themselves.
And lastly maybe this should be a requirement for all state and local school board members BEFORE they are elected to office – make them have to take whatever tests are presented in their states that the children have to take whether they are from PAARC, SBAC or AIR and publish their scores. I bet over 90% of them would fail.
It might interest the reader’s to know that almost every person noted here or serving on these Corporations/Foundations/Association’s not only support the Common Core but they highly support Charter schools and Vouchers. Have you heard or understood a word I have said to you about the meaning behind those two? There are coming after your children!