SuperOracle123
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What's behind the Common Core Curriculum
From Germany to Communist China to the Soviet Union to the United States today, the elites have a goal:
Conformity uber alles.
Until recently, that's been hard to
enforce. People can do "inconvenient" things like read and research and
think for themselves.
Big Business and Big Government and their handmaidens in Big Education have a plan to remedy that.
The
National Governors Association, the Gates Foundation, Intel, Microsoft,
the World Bank, and the �learning company� Pearson are working hard
together to bring a nightmare curriculum to fruition.
Their vision
is one where techno-socialization, not knowledge gained from
independent sources or critical thinking ability, is the top priority
for education.
Documentarian Aaron Franz interviews education
researcher Robin Eubanks about the Rotten Core Curriculum, and this
video covers some of their main points in an excerpted form.
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Common Core: $500 billion scandal
Exclusive: Carole Hornsby Haynes blasts federal takeover driven by corporate giants
By Carole Hornsby Haynes
Why
are powerful corporate interests pushing Common Core? Could it be the
promise of national scale business opportunities for White House
loyalists?
Signaling philanthropic capital, Joanne Weiss, the
chief of staff to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and leader of the
Obama administration’s Race to the Top program, blogged in the
Harvard Business Review:
“The
development of common standards and shared assessments radically alters
the market for innovation in curriculum development, professional
development, and formative assessments. Previously, these markets
operated on a state-by-state basis, and often on a district-by-district
basis. But the adoption of common standards and shared assessments means
that education entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets where the best
products can be taken to scale.
In this new market, it will make
sense for researchers to mine data to learn which materials and teaching
strategies are effective for which students – and then feed that
information back to students, teachers, and parents.”
Student
information obtained through Common Core testing – data mining – is
being shared with private companies that sell educational products and
services. These companies will mine the information to create new
tailored products.
Republican
Rupert Murdoch,
chairman and CEO of News Corporation, stated, “When it comes to K
through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone
that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that
extend the reach of great teaching.”
It didn’t go unnoticed that
Bill Gates spent – more accurately, primed the pump – $5 billion buying
his own version of education reform. From bribing the National Parents
Association, to paying the Council of Chief State School Officers for
the development of Common Core, to doling out funds to other major
centers of influence, the Gates money has attracted those of all stripes
who will benefit from the success of Common Core.
News Corp.
purchased Wireless Generation in 2010. News Corporation then created
Amplify, of which Wireless Generation is a part, to create digital
products and services for K-12. Soon after, Amplify partnered with
AT&T.
Joel I. Klein, former chancellor of New York City, joined News Corp. as an executive vice president.
GE Foundation gave $18 million
to Student Achievement Partners to assist states in implementing Common
Core. Student Achievement Partners was founded by David Coleman,
architect of Common Core and now, as president of the College Board is
redesigning the SAT.
President of GE Foundation Robert Corcoran
said, “Our economy is facing an undeniable challenge – good paying jobs
are going unfilled because U.S. workers don’t have the skills to fill
the positions. We must cultivate a highly educated workforce and we see
the Standards as a key component to answering this challenge.”
One wonders if there is more to this than meets the eye. Yes, the
GE website sports a full range of data management and data analytics software solutions.
A
Fordham Institute
editor gushed that business leaders were rallying around Common Core as
he name-dropped the powerful who attended the GE Foundation’s Summer
Business and Education Summit in Orland0.
The biggest gusher at
the Summit was Jeb Bush, whose Foundation for Excellence in Education is
supported by the Gates Foundation. Sounding the crisis alarm, he
predicted “that states are heading for a ‘train wreck.’ He noted that
when the new standards and assessments come fully online in 2015 that
many communities, schools, and families are in for a rude awakening.”
Read More Here
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September 27
By JOE ROBERTSON
The Kansas City Star
Brad Neuenswander, deputy commissioner of education in Kansas,
spends a lot of time on the phone these days talking about the Common
Core State Standards.
“I had a one-hour conversation with a mother over lunch just
today,” he said. Talking about what they are. And even more so, “what
they are not.”
“I had someone tell me they heard that they were a way to eliminate local school boards. I’d never even heard
that one.”
As
all Kansas City area school districts and most systems nationwide put
the standards into action, they are fending off 11th-hour accusations of
a nationwide curriculum — that a federal agency will dictate lesson
plans.
Certainly the
standards
are a dramatic creation for American schools. They propose a set of
common expectations of the knowledge and skills that children should
attain according to grade level in math and English language arts.
They
aim to increase rigor and inspire deeper and creative thinking so
seniors graduate ready for college or training for competitive careers.
They represent one of the most collaborative state-level enterprises imaginable in the political world of education.
But
for educators, it’s as if this jumbo airliner they spent years
designing is being chased down the runway just as it is lifting off.
They already had enough challenges going forward.
The
assessments being designed to test student performance under the new
standards will cost billions of dollars nationwide to implement.
The assessments’ computerized format will strain many districts’ technology and web accessibility.
Scores
almost inevitably will dip at first, clouding the perception of public
schools. And this is coinciding with nationwide pressure to make student
performance data a bigger part of teacher and principal evaluations.
Forty-five
states, including Kansas and Missouri, have adopted the standards, and
Minnesota has adopted the reading half. But Missouri and Kansas also
stand among as many as nine states that have had lawmakers attempt to
repeal them or cut their funding.
Earlier this month, leaders of the Kansas Republican Party adopted a resolution calling on the state to withdraw.
The backlash interrupts what had been a surprisingly smooth ride for education’s grand proposal.
“It
seemed like an idea whose time had come,” said Jim Dunn of Liberty, who
is directing a National School Public Relations Association project to
publicize the merits of Common Core.
Education think tanks had long bemoaned America’s lagging performance in international testing.
U.S.
schools too often were loading students up with too much content and
not enough applicable skills. Comparisons between states were difficult.
Disparities in state test rigor confused any search for successful
schools that might serve as models.
In the mid-2000s, Republican
and Democratic governors joined with state education commissioners to
work with Achieve Inc. to collaborate on a new set of standards.
The idea was the standards would be state-driven. They would set a higher bar to guide educators.
The
curriculum and the classroom strategies used to teach to those
standards would remain the unique contribution of schools and their
teachers.
By the end of 2010, all but a few states had signed on.
“It was surprisingly successful,” Dunn said. “I think the people who backed it got complacent.”
The education community did not always effectively inform people outside its universe of what was in store, he said. A
PDK/Gallup poll released in August found, even now, that 60 percent of Americans do not know what Common Core is.
“This was a vacuum,” he said.
Plenty of concerned national voices have filled that space.
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