CCSS (Common Core State Standards) You may know little about it or, may have never even heard of it. But while we melt into our cozy couch rootin’ for our beloved team of choice Common Core (CCSS) is sweeping across America. There are things we can do, but getting our precious young minds out of the public school system is a start; although Common Core may well soon stretch its tentacles into every learning place. Below is largely edited from a letter educating the Governor, compiled by Wisconsin patriot and constitutional groups. The federal and state governments will enforce CCSS. Yet, the National Governor’s Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) hold the copyright. [It is big government, top down, control of schooling, (training not educating), that sacrifices individualism for the sake of the collective. Local school boards have zero control of content, even though it is billed as “voluntary”. It is a usurpation of rights reserved for the states.] Local taxpayers like us will have to foot the yet untold bill for CCSS – including but not limited to major technology initiatives, additional administrative staff, training, and textbook compliance. [Costs are estimated to be $16 billion with 90% paid by the states and we have NO say in what’s being taught.] Our children will be subjected to CCSS and will have to live with whatever outcomes it yields. But CCSS will be entirely out of our hands. CCSS marketing spin propagates a second total confabulation: international benchmarking. Show us the proof. CCSS, then, makes children guinea pigs for unproven educational theories and approaches. These are arbitrary standards, not higher standards. As noted in CCSS’s own documentation, the new standards will now prepare children only for technical school, not for a four year college or university. CCSS encourages us to believe that a strict regimen of standardized testing, along with loads of new textbooks and technology, will result in smarter kids. Standardization and standardized testing do not equate to higher standards. In fact, endless standardized testing may well result in children who will take tests – and orders – on command but can’t think for themselves. [It is a deliberate dumbing down of our children as shown by performance scores that have steadily deteriorated since the inception of the Department of Education.] Like many states, Wisconsin signed on to CCSS to obtain a No Child Left Behind Waiver. No CCSS, no waiver. That’s federal coercion, which logically precludes state or local control. According to the terms of the agreement, Wisconsin may determine and implement a mere 15 percent of standards above and beyond CCSS. This stipulation is nonsensical. How would one objectively make this calculation? And what penalties will teachers or school boards risk in teaching to a higher standard – which, having investigated CCSS thoroughly, we would strongly encourage them to do? [It is] contended that Wisconsin’s low educational standards result in large measure from increasing centralized control over several decades. Restoring greater local control is the answer, not doubling down on increasingly Orwellian centralization. Every day, teachers are faced with the reality that each student learns differently. CCSS’s one-size-fits-all approach severely limits individualized attention and the use of unique methods to accommodate and bridge differing learning styles. Under CCSS, teachers will spend approximately one third of classroom time administering standardized tests. How does reducing teachers to mere proctors for much of the school year encourage or enhance exceptional instruction? [Standards are so low that 2 Ph.D.’s serving on the committee refused to sign off.] In utter circumvention of federal child privacy laws, CCSS aims to track children from cradle to career via a “student information system,” a massive database intended to collect far more than academic records. Such data collection is actually already occurring but will expand profoundly. [The data tracking requirement from K through Career is an intrusive violation of the privacy rights of our children and their parents.] A February 2013 Federal Department of Education report notes that the feds intend to use schools to catalog “attributes, dispositions, social skills, attitudes and intrapersonal resources – independent of intellectual ability.” To be very clear, that includes physical data; psychological data; feelings, beliefs, and personal biases; political data and voting status; religious affiliations; interpersonal data; financial information; medical records; and a multitude of other data points and groupings. The data will be identifiable to the child, not anonymous. Worse still, all of this private, personal data on our children will be farmed out to whoever “needs” it. Translation: Our children’s information is already absolutely free to many and will soon be for sale to others. CCSS is not limited government. It is not local control of education. It is not even state control of education. It does not represent a benchmarked or better standard for students. It will not encourage better teachers. It wrongly quells the voices of parents, citizens, and taxpayers. Moreover, CCSS is not fixable. Rather, it is a gross corruption of fiduciary duty and a violation of citizen’s rights on multiple levels. However much money and effort will be down the drain in backing away from CCSS, consider it cheap in comparison to what will result from continuing to embrace this monstrosity. [Finally, it violates the state constitution, which our representatives are required to uphold.] Scott
Posted on: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 16:52:12 +0000
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