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    Education "Reform" : “Common Core” standards

    Rotten to the Core: Obama’s War on Academic Standards (Part 1)
    By Michelle Malkin • January 23, 2013 09:43 AM


    This year, I’ll be using my syndicated column and blog space to expose how progressive “reformers” — mal-formers — are corrupting our schools. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to provide you in-depth coverage of this vital issue that too often gets shunted off the daily political/partisan agenda. While the GOP tries to solve its ills with better software and communications consultants, the conservative movement — and America — face much larger problems. It doesn’t start with the “low-information voter.” It starts with the no-knowledge student. This is the first in an ongoing series on “Common Core,” the stealthy federal takeover of school curriculum and standards across the country. As longtime readers know, my own experience with this ongoing sabotage of academic excellence dates back to my early reporting on the Clinton-era “Goals 2000″ and “outcome-based” education and extends to my recent parental experience with “Everyday Math”. http://michellemalkin.com/?s=everyday+math

    The good news is that grass-roots education and parental groups, brave teachers, and professors are fighting back. See the resource list/links at the bottom of this column and stay tuned for much more.



    America’s downfall doesn’t begin with the “low-information voter.” It starts with the no-knowledge student.

    For decades, collectivist agitators in our schools have chipped away at academic excellence in the name of fairness, diversity and social justice. “Progressive” reformers denounced Western civilization requirements, the Founding Fathers and the Great Books as racist. They attacked traditional grammar classes as irrelevant in modern life. They deemed ability grouping of students (tracking) bad for self-esteem. They replaced time-tested rote techniques and standard algorithms with fuzzy math, inventive spelling and multicultural claptrap.

    Under President Obama, these top-down mal-formers — empowered by Washington education bureaucrats and backed by misguided liberal philanthropists led by billionaire Bill Gates — are now presiding over a radical makeover of your children’s school curriculum. It’s being done in the name of federal “Common Core” standards that do anything but raise achievement standards. http://www.corestandards.org/

    Common Core was enabled by Obama’s federal stimulus law and his Department of Education’s “Race to the Top” gimmickry. The administration bribed cash-starved states into adopting unseen instructional standards as a condition of winning billions of dollars in grants. Even states that lost their bids for Race to the Top money were required to commit to a dumbed-down and amorphous curricular “alignment.”

    In practice, Common Core’s dubious “college- and career”-ready standards undermine local control of education, usurp state autonomy over curricular materials, and foist untested, mediocre and incoherent pedagogical theories on America’s schoolchildren.

    Over the next several weeks and months, I’ll use this column space to expose who’s behind this disastrous scheme in D.C. backrooms. I’ll tell you who’s fighting it in grassroots tea party and parental revolts across the country from Massachusetts to Indiana, Texas, Georgia and Utah. And most importantly, I’ll explain how this unprecedented federal meddling is corrupting our children’s classrooms and textbooks.

    There’s no better illustration of Common Core’s duplicitous talk of higher standards than to start with its math “reforms.” While Common Core promoters assert their standards are “internationally benchmarked,” independent members of the expert panel in charge of validating the standards refute the claim. Panel member Dr. Sandra Stotsky of the University of Arkansas reported, “No material was ever provided to the Validation Committee or to the public on the specific college readiness expectations of other leading nations in mathematics” or other subjects.

    In fact, 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.

    Ze’ev Wurman, a prominent software architect, electrical engineer and longtime math advisory expert in California and Washington, D.C., points out that Common Core delays proficiency with addition and subtraction until 4th grade and proficiency with basic multiplication until 5th grade, and skimps on logarithms, mathematical induction, parametric equations and trigonometry at the high school level.

    I cannot sum up the stakes any more clearly than Wurman did in his critique of this mess and the vested interests behind it:

    “I believe the Common Core marks the cessation of educational standards improvement in the United States. No state has any reason left to aspire for first-rate standards, as all states will be judged by the same mediocre national benchmark enforced by the federal government. Moreover, there are organizations that have reasons to work for lower and less-demanding standards, specifically teachers unions and professional teacher organizations. While they may not admit it, they have a vested interest in lowering the accountability bar for their members. …This will be done in the name of ‘critical thinking’ and ’21st-century’ skills, and in faraway Washington, D.C., well beyond the reach of parents and most states and employers.”

    This is all in keeping with my own experience as a parent of elementary- and middle-school age kids who were exposed to “Everyday Math” nonsense. This and other fads abandon “drill and kill” memorization techniques for fuzzy “critical thinking” methods that put the cart of “why” in front of the horse of “how.” In other words: Instead of doing the grunt work of hammering times tables and basic functions into kids’ heads first, the faddists have turned to wacky, wordy non-math alternatives to encourage “conceptual” understanding — without any mastery of the fundamentals of math.

    Common Core is rotten to the core. The corruption of math education is just the beginning.

    ***

    A starter list of resources/background/related links:

    Truth in American Education is a blog devoted to watchdogging Common Core across the country.

    The MA-based Pioneer Institute is the leading think tank tracking and fighting Common Core.

    Pioneer’s Jim Stergios has an education blog, Rock the Schoolhouse, on Boston.com.

    Hoosier Moms Say No to Common Core is Ground Zero for the parental revolt against Common Core in Indiana.

    Utah moms against Common Core have a great blog.

    A Mother Speaks Out: Children For Sale – Guest Post by Alyson Williams.

    Stanley Kurtz has written about Common Core at NRO here and here.

    Mary Grabar has written about Common Core and Team Chicago’s lefties here.

    Phyllis Schlafly, as always, sounded the alarm here.

    This must-read piece by James Shuls connects Common Core, math corruption, and the need for school choice.

    Heritage resources on Common Core.

    Videos:

    APP’s full video series on Common Core here. Here’s part one to get you started.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coRNJ...layer_embedded

    Cato’s Neal McCluskey dissects the Common Core folly:
    http://youtu.be/0xhm_x8PX7I

    http://michellemalkin.com/2013/01/23...ndards-part-1/
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    Here’s the next installment of my Rotten to the Core series. I’ll continue to post resource/background/activist links at the end of every post. See also the links below to my previous critiques of GOP-led national standards efforts and related posts on dumbed-down curriculum/Everyday Math.

    There are many, many amazing grass-roots efforts in the states that have been gaining ground over the past three years and I hope to spotlight as many of them as possible. They’ve been in this fight a long time and their work is indispensable. It’s important to note that the Common Core cheerleaders’ claim that their agenda came from the bottom up is false. Flat-out false. http://truthinamericaneducation.com/...-is-state-led/

    I’ll also be printing e-mails, feedback, critiques, and responses. Stay tuned, spread the word, get informed, and get active.




    Common Core learning: The Gettysburg Address “word cloud”

    Rotten to the Core (Part 2): Readin’, Writin’ and Deconstructionism
    By Michelle Malkin • January 25, 2013 11:10 AM

    The Washington, D.C., board of education earned widespread mockery this week when it proposed allowing high school students — in the nation’s own capital — to skip a basic U.S. government course to graduate. But this is fiddlesticks compared to what the federal government is doing to eliminate American children’s core knowledge base in English, language arts and history.

    Thanks to the “Common Core” regime, funded with President Obama’s stimulus dollars and bolstered by duped Republican governors and business groups, deconstructionism is back in style. Traditional literature is under fire. Moral relativism is increasingly the norm. “Standards” is Orwell-speak for subjectivity and lowest common denominator pedagogy.

    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.

    Deconstructionism, of course, is the faddish leftwing school of thought popularized by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in the 1970s. Writer Robert Locke described the nihilistic movement best: “It is based on the proposition that the apparently real world is in fact a vast social construct and that the way to knowledge lies in taking apart in one’s mind this thing society has built. Taken to its logical conclusion, it supposes that there is at the end of the day no actual reality, just a series of appearances stitched together by social constructs into what we all agree to call reality.”

    Literature and history are all about competing ideological narratives, in other words. One story or “text” is no better than another. Common Core’s literature-lite literacy standards are aimed not at increasing “college readiness” or raising academic expectations. Just the opposite. They help pave the way for more creeping political indoctrination under the guise of increasing access to “information.”

    As University of Arkansas professor Sandra Stotsky, an unrelenting whistleblower who witnessed the Common Core sausage-making process firsthand, concluded: “An English curriculum overloaded with advocacy journalism or with ‘informational’ articles chosen for their topical and/or political nature should raise serious concerns among parents, school leaders, and policymakers. Common Core’s standards not only present a serious threat to state and local education authority, but also put academic quality at risk. Pushing fatally flawed education standards into America’s schools is not the way to improve education for America’s students.”

    Bipartisan Common Core defenders claim their standards are merely “recommendations.” But the standards, “rubrics” and “exemplars” are tied to tests and textbooks. The textbooks and tests are tied to money and power. Federally funded and federally championed nationalized standards lead inexorably to de facto mandates. Any way you slice it, dice it or word-cloud it, Common Core is a mandate for mediocrity.

    http://michellemalkin.com/2013/01/25...nstructionism/
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    Rotten to the Core: Reader feedback from the frontlines
    By Michelle Malkin • January 31, 2013 12:54 PM


    I have more installment of my Rotten to the Core series on the federalized national curriculum “standards” coming next week. (see parts one and two here and here.) In the meantime, I’m sharing several of the e-mails pouring in from teachers, parents, and activists across the country who are fighting this juggernaut across the country.

    From a history teacher:

    I am anxiously awaiting the next installment in your Rotten to the Core series. As a history teacher, the Common Core Standards don’t have much of an impact on my teaching (yet – and to my understanding). The whole of this program seems to be shrouded in edu-speak and double talk (which are mostly the same).

    In addition to the Common Core, we were given an intro to another change coming to my district… and from what I’ve seen, it is spreading to districts across the country. The new model for teaching is Strategic Planning Strategies (based on Cambridge Strategies), which include Applied Learning (seems similar to problem based learning – students focus on and develop a solution to a problem facing their community). We were shown a video, which listed beliefs held by my district. There were immediately a some statements that stood out, including a belief that “cultural proficiency leads to equity and removes barriers to opportunity” – especially troubling was when a teacher asked for clarification on what was meant by “cultural proficiency”, we were told by our administrator that she didn’t know.

    Another statement that stood out, was that we were going to educate students “from cradle to career”. I’ve looked up the keywords of this program and found this website (http://www.suny.edu/educationpipelin...letocareer.cfm) that seeks to use this model to form a “framework for civic infrastructure” that is based on this program…

    … I see this as another path of indoctrination “from cradle to career”.
    ..

    From an English teacher:

    Dear Ms. Malkin,

    I just wanted to email my appreciation of your scathing attack on the new Common Core standards. As a high school teacher myself, I feel inclined to share with you that I am neither a democrat, nor a republican, and I’m personally not for the whole vilification of one administration over another. The thesis of your article, however, is in the right place. I’d like to bypass the back-and-forth rhetoric of your comment thread and let you know that we teachers feel the same way you do, and we are powerless to make a change in what they will allow us to teach. (It is at this point that I must disagree with Mr. Wurman’s assessment, “Moreover, there are organizations that have reasons to work for lower and less-demanding standards, specifically teachers unions’ and professional teacher organizations. While they may not admit it, they have a vested interest in lowering the accountability bar for their members. . . .” We have no interest in lowering the accountability bar. We did not take up teaching for the sake of having an “easy gig”.)

    In fact, we were just in a department meeting for English teachers last week, and I had spoken up, asking why we can’t diagram sentences. You probably would’ve been pleased by the number of teachers who applauded the idea before we were shot down by our department head.

    It needs to be stated that there are a great many teachers who DO NOT support Common Core, yet can do nothing about it, as we are being told what to teach and how to teach it, despite our instincts otherwise. In truth, nothing is going to improve with Federal involvement in education, because any politician who would try to take down Common Core or NCLB would be committing “political suicide”. Perhaps that is a point you can make in future articles?

    All the best,
    Chris Malone
    ...

    From a school board member:

    I just read the Rotten to the Core articles. I am disgusted to say the least, and worse yet, I am a school board member who did not do my homework. I was a “low information voter.” We adopted the Common Core Standards by applying for Race to The Top. I had a gut feeling that if it was money from the government it couldn’t be good. Unfortunately I didn’t go with my gut feeling this time. I am at a loss as where to go from here. I have mentioned our English curriculum to the administrator, and he said we are going to start implementing a new curriculum.

    I feel I am a minority on our board and need to start speaking up, where does one go from here? I am at a loss.
    ..

    From education reform activist Dawn Llewellyn:

    A new “fuzzy” math program (College Preparatory Mathematics – CPM) is being piloted in our district and likely to be voted and purchased in April. CPM teaches more social skills than mathematics. Fairfield Curriculum Leaders stress the impetus for change to this math program is the Common Core Standards…

    We would love for you to cover this story… please consider it!

    http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/F...ob-4109282.php
    http://fairfield.patch.com/articles/...m-algebra-book
    http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/C...am-4175992.php
    http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/F...ob-4109282.php
    http://www.fairfieldcitizenonline.co...ew-4089730.php
    http://www.fairfieldcitizenonline.co...ly-4099431.php

    Just to fill you in–I am part of the parent advocacy group that is fighting the imminent adoption of CPM in our middle and high schools in Fairfield, CT. The district secretly implemented it without BOE approval and we’re trying to challenge them on the technicality of state statutes that require BOE to approve texts. In the meantime, we’re educating parents on the failure of reform math, in particularly CPM.

    Unfortunately, we are up against a BOE that thinks the curriculum leaders are “experts.” The curriculum leaders are justifying this transition to a new math program with Common Core and the Mathematical Practices’ call for justifying one’s work and critiquing others,’ etc.

    At all five math nights in our district, our administrators have misrepresented the practices by saying “conceptual understanding must come before skill.”

    Our district was recently cited in the The Atlantic. Barry Garelick states that “schools are adopting an inquiry method of learning, in which children are supposed to discover knowledge for themselves” but he states that districts are misinterpreting the verbiage of the common core.”

    Mr. Garelick also wrote to me and directed me to a comment in the blog of this article from one of the main authors of the common core standards. McCallum states that the standards do not say that conceptual understanding must come first and explicitly on page 5 of the standards it says: “these standards do not dictate curriculum or teaching methods.” Our curriculum leaders continue to present misinformation to parents, either because they are do not understand the common core math practices or they are intentionally misleading our community to push an alternative agenda.

    (See his letter to us.) http://fairfieldmathadvocates.com/on...core-practice/

    CPM is a prescriptive form of teaching mathematics with social engineering as the guiding principle: social responsibility, equity, multidimensional classrooms, group think vs teacher instruction, etc. “Complex Instruction” is the guiding principles behind CPM instructional method.(see article about “complex instruction”). If this program is adopted by our district, there has and will continue to be a push to sell this program (CPM) to our surrounding districts who are also looking for ways to get students “ready for the 21st century”. This program is dumbing down Mathematics!

    Our group noticed that NBC recently covered a story on “Is Algebra Necessary?” with a tie in to Jo Boaler…Jo Boaler is a proponent of CPM. She and Megan Staples did a research study called Railside ( an urban school in CA – San Lorenzo) with CPM. Her research is being seriously challenged by math professors (Bishop, Wayne, and Clopton) who are questioning the validity of this study. Megan Staples is a UConn Professor who has been observing Algebra I classes in our district this year (without parents’ knowledge) and she is on the Fairfield Curriculum Review Committee (which is only looking at this program and nothing else). http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-n...64372#50264372
    (See studies attached to review her study and the controversy)

    Our group has spoken to numerous professors and advocacy groups on the west coast about this program, as well as advocacy groups and professors on the east coast (penfield, ny/ brandford, ct/ Yale Univeristy/ Brown University) about other reform math programs (IMP) and CPM. These programs have unproven track records, yet are still around. I urge you to look at our website www.fairfieldmathadvocates.com
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    From Dean Kalahar, a Florida teacher of nearly 30 years:

    Michelle, (Miss Malkin), your common core work is significant.

    You may use any of my research and articles to add weight and facts. I have been fighting a revisionist battle for some time. If you read the facts provided, you will be shocked. By the way, I’m a 28 year veteran teacher.

    http://freedom-choice-cost.blogspot....n-history.html
    http://freedom-choice-cost.blogspot....xit-exams.html
    ...

    From parent activist Beth Schultz in Maine:

    Dear Michelle,

    Thanks so much for exposing the Common Core State Standards. Alarms when off in my head when my three children were in kindergarten, second & third grades. These were exposed to Everyday Math. I followed the money in our state (Maine) and found out how this curriculum was forced onto our public schools (via the Maine Math and Science Alliance). There was no hope of educating my School Board on my concerns with Everyday Math.

    Then, I read about the Common Core State Standards. It didn’t take me long to put two and two together to figure out the “big picture” concerns with the CCSS. I took a day off of work and testified AGAINST the CCSS (with 2 other parents) to the Maine Education Committee (http://www.maine.gov/legis/house/jt_com/edu.htm). My comments are on public record. I presented to the Committee the concerns of Dr. Stotsky and Dr. Milgr[a]m. Even the Republicans on the Ed Committee didn’t “get it.”

    They all voted in favor of Maine’s adoption of the CCSS (I also met with Gov. LePage twice to warn him). I tell parents, if they want to figure out what is going on their children’s education, they need to attend the state Ed Committee meetings, not their local Board Meeting. After the CCSS are implemented, there will no longer be any reason to attend local Board meeting, because parents will have NO influence in curricula or standards.
    ...

    From parent activist Sue Peterson in Minnesota:

    Dear Michelle,

    Thank you so much for calling attention to the Common Core Standards and Race to the Top!!!
    I became an activist on 1998 when NCLB was law and the standards movement started to expand nationwide.
    In MN a grassroots movement that involved Michele Bachmann, helped get her elected, first as a state senator & now congresswoman.
    It doesn’t matter which party is the majority in D.C., the unconstitutional invasion of the education cartel nation-wide seems unstoppable.

    We have at least one generation who does not know our nations founding primary documents, and I believe this is by design.
    Locally we are now battling the re-writing of state social studies standards that teach America is evil. The cartel I’m sure has their hand in this.

    Please! Please! Please!
    Do not let this issue go away!! For the sake of our nation!
    Most people aren’t even aware of CCS or RTTT and the background.
    You have the exposure we don’t have.

    Thank You!
    Sue Peterson
    http://michellemalkin.com/2013/01/31...he-frontlines/
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    Is this what we are aiming for ?



    California no longer requiring eighth graders to take Algebra

    2:22 AM 02/08/2013

    California will no longer require eighth-graders to take algebra — a move that is line with the Common Core standards being adopted by most states, but that may leave students unprepared for college.

    Last month, California formally shifted to the Common Core mathematics standards, which recommend that students delay taking algebra if they aren’t ready for it. Previously, algebra class was a requirement for all eighth-graders in the state.

    The Common Core State Standards Initiative, which is sponsored by the National Governor’s Association, is an effort to unify diverse state education curricula. Forty-five other states and the District of Columbia have signed on so far.

    But some education experts worry that the change will further damage struggling students’ college chances, since early proficiency in Algebra I is an excellent predictor of college graduation, according to the Mercury News.

    Black and Latino students in California are significantly more likely to fail eighth-grade algebra, and 80 percent of those who fail it once will fail it again when they take it in high school.

    A study published by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area claims that some minority students who score well enough to place into advanced math classes are often mistakenly held back.

    “School districts have been disproportionately requiring minority students to repeat Algebra I even after they scored proficient or advanced on the Algebra I California standardized tests,” said Kimberly Thomas Rapp, executive director of the committee, in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation.

    The new standard is a step back for California, and may leave students, particularly minority and low-income students, unprepared for college, said Rapp. “Back in ‘97 when the state went to a standard that expected students to take Algebra 1 in the eighth grade, that was really about looking forward to college competitiveness and preparing our public school students to be ready to compete to access college systems after high school,” she said. “The reality is what we’re now doing is lowering the standards.”

    Instead, Rapp proposed that California schools improve the mathematics curriculum for students in the fifth, sixth and seventh grades, so that they are better prepared for Algebra I in eighth grade.

    The Council of Chief State School Officers, which set the Common Core standards, did not respond to a request for comment.

    http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/08/ca...-take-algebra/
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    Published on Jan 29, 2013
    Treasurer John Kennedy and what he has learned as as substitute teacher

    So many people who make policy for elementary and secondary education think the schools are like they were thirty years ago like "Leave It to Beaver" when Wally and Beaver were in school, but it's a different world today.

    Some of our teachers don't feel like the folks who are making education policy understand what it is like to be a teacher today, and they're probably right. - Treasurer John Kennedy

    For more information visit www.LATreasury.com or www.facebook.com/LouisianaTreasury

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmSjY...JxSmUw&index=2
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    Last week I purchased a burger at a fast food restaurant for $1.58. The counter girl took my $ 2 and I was digging for my change when I pulled 8 cents from my pocket and gave it to her. She stood there, holding the nickel and 3 pennies, while looking at the screen on her register. I sensed her discomfort and tried to tell her to just give me two quarters, but she hailed the manager for help. While he tried to explain the transaction to her, she stood there and cried.

    Why do I tell you this? Because of the evolution in teaching math since the 1950s:

    1. Teaching Math In 1950s

    A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?

    2. Teaching Math In 1960s

    A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

    3. Teaching Math In1970s

    A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit?

    4. Teaching Math In 1980s

    A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

    5. Teaching Math In 1990s

    A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of $20. What do you think of this way of making a living?

    Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers, and if you feel like crying, it's ok. )

    6. Teaching Math In 2009

    Un hachero vende una carretada de maderapara $100. El costo de la producciones es $80. Cuanto dinero ha hecho?

    7. Teaching Math In 2013

    Who cares, just steal the lumber from your rich neighbor's property. He won't have a gun to stop you, and it's OK anyway cuz it's redistributing the wealth.
    Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

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    In my district algebra is offered in 6th grade. As you go thru high school and no math is available because you have mastered what they offered, you get college math. The benefit is you receive both high school and college credit. The same is true for science and history. This is going to kill the education system in my district.

    Me

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    Rotten to the Core: The Feds’ Invasive Student Tracking Database
    By Michelle Malkin • March 8, 2013 09:41 AM


    (This is the fourth installment of a continuing series on nationalized academic standards known as the “Common Core.”)

    While many Americans worry about government drones in the sky spying on our private lives, Washington meddlers are already on the ground and in our schools gathering intimate data on children and families.

    Say goodbye to your children’s privacy. Say hello to an unprecedented nationwide student tracking system, whose data will apparently be sold by government officials to the highest bidders. It’s yet another encroachment of centralized education bureaucrats on local control and parental rights under the banner of “Common Core.”

    As the American Principles Project, a conservative education think tank, reported last year, Common Core’s technological project is “merely one part of a much broader plan by the federal government to track individuals from birth through their participation in the workforce.” The 2009 porkulus package included a “State Fiscal Stabilization Fund” to bribe states into constructing “longitudinal data systems (LDS) to collect data on public-school students.”

    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.

    At the South by Southwest education conference in Austin, Texas, this week, education technology gurus were salivating at the prospects of information plunder. “This is going to be a huge win for us,” Jeffrey Olen, a product manager at education software company CompassLearning, told Reuters. Cha-ching-ching-ching.

    The company is already aggressively marketing curricular material “aligned” to fuzzy, dumbed-down Common Core math and reading guidelines (which more than a dozen states are now revolting against). Along with two dozen other tech firms, CompassLearning sees even greater financial opportunities to mine Common Core student tracking systems. The centralized database is a strange-bedfellows alliance between the liberal Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (which largely underwrote and promoted the Common Core curricular scheme) and a division of conservative Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (which built the database infrastructure).

    Another nonprofit startup, “inBloom, Inc.,” has evolved out of that partnership to operate the database. The Gates Foundation and other partners provided $100 million in seed money. Reuters reports that inBloom, Inc. will “likely start to charge fees in 2015″ to states and school districts participating in the system. “So far, seven states — Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina and Massachusetts — have committed to enter data from select school districts. Louisiana and New York will be entering nearly all student records statewide.”

    The National Education Data Model, available online at http://nces.sifinfo.org/datamodel/ei...ntarySecondary, lists hundreds of data points considered indispensable to the nationalized student tracking racket. These include:

    –”Bus Stop Arrival Time” and “Bus Stop Description.”

    –”Dwelling arrangement.”

    –”Diseases, Illnesses and Other Health Conditions.”

    –”Religious Affiliation.”

    –”Telephone Number Type” and “Telephone Status.”


    Home-schoolers and religious families that reject traditional government education would be tracked. Original NEDM data points included hair color, eye color, weight, blood types and even dental status. http://educationnewyork.com/files/11...heir-scope.pdf

    How exactly does amassing and selling such personal data improve educational outcomes? It doesn’t. This, at its core, is the central fraud of Washington’s top-down nationalized curricular scheme. The Bill Gates-endorsed Common Core “standards” are a phony pretext for big-government expansion. The dazzling allure of “21st-century technology” masks the privacy-undermining agenda of nosy bureaucratic drones allergic to transparency, accountability and parental autonomy. Individual student privacy is sacrificed at the collective “For the Children” altar.

    Fed Ed is not about excellence or academic achievement. It’s about control, control and more control.

    http://michellemalkin.com/2013/03/08...king-database/
    Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

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    CBS article on illiteracy riddled with spelling errors, punctuation mistakes
    Posted at 9:50 pm on March 7, 2013 by Twitchy Staff

    Lynn Baber @Lynn_Baber


    Officials: 80 Percent Of Recent NYC High School Graduates Cannot Read...

    Officials told CBS 2 that nearly 80 percent of those who graudate from NYC high schools arrived at City University's community college system without having mastered the skills to do college-level...
    CBS New York@CBSNewYork
    CBS: "80% of recent NY graduates can't read." Whoever wrote/proofed the article left 7 spelling/grammatical errors. http://cbsloc.al/XtvPkL

    11:22 PM - 07 Mar 13
    A CBS New York article on illiterate high-school graduates caught our attention today, and for all the wrong reasons. Despite bemoaning the fact that 80 percent of recent New York City graduates lack basic reading skills(!), the article itself is loaded with spelling errors and grammatical mistakes: http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/03/...s-cannot-read/


    “I was nervus about how hard it was going to be, how much of a chnage it was going to be from high school,” Gonzalez said. “I knew I needed to take remedial, If I started right away with credit classes it wasnt going to be so well, so it’s better off starting somewhere.



    “They get lost sometimes in the classrom and in CUNY Start we give them a lot more one-on-one attention, small grouip work. It helps theem achieve more in a short amount of time and so they’re able to get on with their credit classes,” Mason said.
    Here’s the best part: we have no clue who “Mason” is. That name appears nowhere else in the piece.Here’s the best part: we have no clue who “Mason” is. That name appears nowhere else in the piece.

    Nicholas Gonzalez, a graduate of New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn, participated in the CUNY Start program. He said he would never had been able to face college credit classes without it.
    That’s not all. The original version of the article contained a subhead that misspelled the word “immersion”:


    It takes a lot of restraint for us not to print the article out, circle the errors with a red pen, and send it to the station with a big “F” on it.

    Nobody’s perfect, but a major news organization should be able to do better. At the very least, CBS New York’s copy editor should be flogged with cords of shredded newsprint. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to go scream into a pillow out of linguistic frustration.

    Update: Several readers noted the typo “theem” in the quote from “Mason.” We don’t have a screen shot or cached copy of the original CBS article, so we can’t confirm that it was CBS’ error. We suspect it was.

    http://twitchy.com/2013/03/07/cbs-ar...tion-mistakes/
    Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

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