EXCELLENT ARTICLE and explanation on Common Core!!!! This is a must read! ...... "Today I was in a professional development session for my school district. Our school system has swallowed the Common Core curriculum whole. Why wouldn’t they? The federal system has said that it is “voluntary”, but “voluntary” means that the district gets cut off from major federal funding if it does not adopt the standards, so “voluntary” is subjective. Here is what the Washington Post reported Sen. Charles Grassley has to say about Common Core: Current federal law makes clear that the U.S. Department of Education may not be involved in setting specific content standards or determining the content of state assessments. Nevertheless, the selection criteria designed by the U.S. Department of Education for the Race to the Top Program provided that for a state to have any chance to compete for funding, it must commit to adopting a “common set of K-12 standards” matching the description of the Common Core. The Washington Post also reported, “The Republican National Committee recognizes the CCSS for what it is — an inappropriate overreach to standardize and control the education of our children…” For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Common Core, it is a curriculum created in the private sector but pushed onto states by the federal government and endorsed by Bill Gates. The cost of implementing the program runs from millions to billions depending on the state. It is untested and unresearched. It has been criticized for being not as rigorous as proponents claim, clearly biased to a liberal perspective, so much so that many see it as indoctrination, and it is being forced on the states in spite of the fact that a federal curriculum is unconstitutional violating the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which established the principle that“…the “power” to oversee education belongs to the states. This longstanding principle of local control of education is reiterated throughout our laws and government codes.” All of that sounds like something that makes NO connection whatsoever to most parents or teachers or American citizens as to why they should fight this curriculum. Here, I am going to provide you with a concrete example that shows the ugly heart of the Common Core. There is something deeply dark and offensive in this lesson created to support Common Core. It is a lesson designed to corrupt essential human decency. The unit – sorry “module” – that I am using as an example is centered around To Kill a Mockingbird with the theme of “How individuals demonstrate individuality in the face of outside pressures.” At the beginning of all of this, it looks good. I love the book; it is a great American classic and I have taught it many times. The module includes 30 days of lessons associated with the novel and multiple additional short reading assignments. However, as I looked this module over, I became more and more concerned. For me to break down the many problems with this module in detail would take quite a while, so I am going to show you an example of one lesson on one short reading assignment that left me speechless with horror......."
Posted on: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 02:57:32 +0000
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