I REPORT, YOU DECIDE. BY BARRY LEVINSON
FULLERTON CIVIC LEADER AND ACTIVIST MR. BARRY LEVINSON
There has been a lot of discussion about Common Core lately and a growing swell of concerned parents across the country as public schools nationwide begin to apply the Federal standards to curriculums. But what are the facts?
Michelle Malkin has been doing tireless research and reporting on Common Core, and currently has an ongoing series of articles in which she breaks down Common Core into its essential parts. The truth is that there’s more to Common Core than what you might think, and much of it is very alarming.
Syndicated columnist and author Michelle Malkin
Here are excerpts from her articles and links to each one. I would highly encourage readers to click read these in their entirety. It’s important information, especially if you have kids in public schools.
Part 1 – Common Core’s war on math standards
Stanford University professor James Milgram, the only mathematician on the validation panel, concluded that the Common Core math scheme would place American students two years behind their peers in other high-achieving countries. In protest, Milgram refused to sign off on the standards. He’s not alone.
Professor Jonathan Goodman of New York University found that the Common Core math standards imposed “significantly lower expectations with respect to algebra and geometry than the published standards of other countries.”
Under Common Core, as the American Principles Project and Pioneer Institute point out, algebra I instruction is pushed to 9th grade, instead of 8th grade, as commonly taught. Division is postponed from 5th to 6th grade. Prime factorization, common denominators, conversions of fractions and decimals, and algebraic manipulation are de-emphasized or eschewed. Traditional Euclidean geometry is replaced with an experimental approach that had not been previously pilot-tested in the U.S.
Part 2 – Common Core’s deconstruction of English and literature
Take the Common Core literacy “standards.” Please. As literature professors, writers, humanities scholars, secondary educators and parents have warned over the past three years, the new achievement goals actually set American students back by de-emphasizing great literary works for “informational texts.” Challenging students to digest and dissect difficult poems and novels is becoming passe. Utilitarianism uber alles.
The Common Core English/language arts criteria call for students to spend only half of their class time studying literature, and only 30 percent of their class time by their junior and senior years in high school.
Under Common Core, classics such as “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” are of no more academic value than the pages of the Federal Register or the Federal Reserve archives — or a pro-Obamacare opinion essay in The New Yorker. Audio and video transcripts, along with “alternative literacies” that are more “relevant” to today’s students (pop song lyrics, for example), are on par with Shakespeare.
English professor Mary Grabar describes Common Core training exercises that tell teachers “to read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address without emotion and without providing any historical context. Common Core reduces all ‘texts’ to one level: the Gettysburg Address to the EPA’s Recommended Levels of Insulation.” Indeed, in my own research, I found one Common Core “exemplar” on teaching the Gettysburg Address that instructs educators to “refrain from giving background context or substantial instructional guidance at the outset.”
Another exercise devised by Common Core promoters features the Gettysburg Address as a word cloud. Yes, a word cloud. Teachers use the jumble of letters, devoid of historical context and truths, to help students chart, decode and “deconstruct” Lincoln’s speech.
Part 3 – Common Core’s mindless political correctness
Texas is a right-minded red state, where patriotism is still a virtue and political correctness is out of vogue. So how on earth have left-wing educators in public classrooms been allowed to instruct Lone Star students to dress in Islamic garb, call the 9/11 jihadists “freedom fighters” and treat the Boston Tea Party participants as “terrorists”?
Here’s the dirty little secret: Despite the best efforts of vigilant parents, teachers and administrators committed to academic excellence, progressive activists reign supreme in government schools.
That’s because curriculum is king. The liberal monopoly on the modern textbook/curricular market remains unchallenged after a half-century. He who controls the textbooks, teaching guides and tests controls the academic agenda.
That is how the propagandistic outfitting of students in Islamic garb came to pass in the unlikely setting of the conservative Lumberton, Texas, school district. As Fox News reporter Todd Starnes noted this week, a 32-year veteran of the high school led a world geography lesson on Islam in which hijab-wrapped students were banned from using the words “suicide bomber” and “terrorist” to describe Muslim mass murderers in favor of the term “freedom fighter.”
Part 4 – Common Core’s invasive student tracking database
These systems will aggregate massive amounts of personal data — health-care histories, income information, religious affiliations, voting status and even blood types and homework completion. The data will be available to a wide variety of public agencies. And despite federal student-privacy protections guaranteed by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the Obama administration is paving the way for private entities to buy their way into the data boondoggle. Even more alarming, the U.S. Department of Education is encouraging a radical push from aggregate-level data-gathering to invasive individual student-level data collection.
Part 5 – How to fight Common Core (and how not to)
In my home state of Colorado, dissent from both conservative and liberal parents forced Jefferson County to allow individual “opt-outs” from the inBloom data-mining machine. The Gates Foundation responded by pouring $5 million into the district for “innovative professional development systems to create personalized learning systems for teachers.” How do you spell special interest payoff?
Not only do these education emperors have no clothes. They have tissue-paper thin skin. Their arrogant, contemptuous and vengeful treatment of dissenting parents and teachers gets a world-class “F.”
Listen up:
We parents of school-age children are all Robert Smalls and Natalie Adamses and Leonie Haimsons. We, not the Obamas or the Bushes or the Gateses or educrats in Washington, are our children’s primary educational providers. Control over our children begins and ends with us.
It is imperative that parents in America be familiar with Common Core’s different functions and how it affects your children’s education. I would highly encourage our readers to pass these articles along to your friends who have kids in public school.
– See more at: http://poorrichardsnews.com/…/
THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONCERN FOR AND YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS ISSUE
#1 by Fullerton's Conscience on November 23, 2014 - 10:38 pm
The school districts must be made aware that a majority or even a significant minority of the parents are against Common Core. If that could be conveyed to them, it might make a difference.
As long as the number of parents speaking out against Common Core is relatively small, the district will probably ignore us.