Simple as A,B,C - Like 1,2,3 - Obama Gets Grade of F

Program Student Minds

Obama's Federal Education Program is based upon Arne Duncan pushing the Common Core State Standards, CCSS, Academic standards - understand it - its your future.

"Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education can’t understand why Americans are demanding freedom from nationalized testing, nationalized standards and nationalized data collection. The Common Core State Standards. Academic standards are under attack as a federal takeover of the schools - parents want local controls back again.

In a speech on September 17, 2013 to the American Society of News Editors, Duncan admits: “… the federal government has nothing to do with curriculum. In fact, we’re prohibited by law from creating or mandating curricula. So do the reporting. Ask the Common Core critics: Please identify a single lesson plan that the federal government created…Challenge them to produce evidence—because they won’t find it. It simply doesn’t exist”.

Duncan says there is no evidence of a federal takeover using Common Core. Well, almost; there is no trace of an Department of Education fingerprint on the writing of the national standards, tests and curriculum. This it correct. But there are massive, unmistakable Department of Education fingerprints all over the promotion, marketing, funding and imposition of the standards on states. These fingerprints are everywhere.

Federally created lesson plans don’t exist because Duncan’s department has worked so hard to get around the rules (i.e., Constitution) and to make others do the wrongs that the Department then promotes and funds. The Department’s associates (i.e. Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford University educator, who believes in forced national redistribution of wealth; Bill Gates, left-wing Microsoft Founder; David Coleman, lead "architect" of Common Core, liberal antagonist to narrative writing and is no fan of classic literature) work with Achieve, Inc., with SBAC, with PARCC, with CCSSO, with NGA and others, to collectively produce the federally-approved education “reform” agenda known as the Common Core Initiative. We know this."

Guess what? There is no evidence that Common Core will do anything it has claimed it can do does not exist– there’s no empirical data, no pilot test, no study to verify claims that the standards will improve diddledy."

The well-reknown and regarded American Association of School Administration, AASA, in their Journal of Scholarship & Practice Research states their purpose for an "Evidence-based Practice That Advance the Profession of Education Administration."  This Winter 2011 Journal contains their highly critical and detailed analysis of what Arne Duncan, the Obama "Education Czar", has developed to indoctrinate the entire American student population from elementary school through college with 'progressive, socialist, liberal studies'. 

This relatively daunting, dry looking report is actually a well written, brief overview about our 'exceptional country' and how well-placed deceptive ideas have been woven into our political landscape.  The mind grab for the people's intellect to think as they are taught is the end game today.  The education misinformation leads to misconceptions which are the hazards of attending classes in schools.  Powerful, left-wing, radical progressives like Billionaire Bill Gates, who heads up the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are entrenched in the battle to replace the American school systems.

PLEASE READ - EDUCATE YOURSELF AGAINST EDUCATION

Read Time: 8 Minutes

Winter 2011

AASA Journal of Scholarship and Practice

COMMENTARY

Christopher H. Tienken, Editor

AASA Journal of Scholarship and Practice

Common Core State Standards (CCSS)

An Example of Data-less Decision Making

The major arguments made by proponents in favor of the CCSS collapse under a review of the empirical literature: (a) America‘s children are lagging behind international peers in terms of academic achievement and (b) the economic vibrancy and future of the United States relies upon American students out ranking their global peers on international tests of academic - Winter 2011 AASA Journal of  Scholarship and Practice achievement because of the mythical relationship between ranks on those tests and a country‘s economic competitiveness..

The persuasive, and to this point effective argument made by proponents combines the classic combination of fear and falsehoods. The Roman Poet Seneca wrote, “We are more often frightened than hurt and we suffer more from imagination than reality.” and in this case Seneca was correct.

Unfortunately for proponents of this empirically vapid argument it is well established that a rank on an international test of academic skills and knowledge does not have the power to predict future economic competitiveness and is otherwise meaningless for a host of reasons.

·   However, fortunately for proponents it seems as if some policy makers, education leaders and those who prepare them, and the major education associations and organizations that penned their support for the CCSS did not read the evidence refuting the argument or they did not understand it.

The contention that a test result can influence the future economic prowess of a country like the United States (U.S.) or any of the G20 nations represents an unbelievable suspension of logic and evidence. (NOTE:  This is one of Obama's most often used "Scare Tactics" to push Americans into supporting federal government education.) 

According to Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, China‘s undervaluation of its currency cost the U.S. almost 1 million jobs and over 200 billion dollars in lost economic growth and 1.5% of its  gross domestic product last year (The Washington Times, 2010). Economic strength of the G20 countries relies more on policy, than education achievement. Tax, trade, health, labor, finance, monetary, housing, and natural resource policies, to name a few, drive our economy, not how students rank on the Trends in International Math and Science Study  (TIMSS) or the Programme for International student Assessment (PISA). 

To believe otherwise is like believing in the tooth-fairy. The U.S. already has one of the highest percentages of people with high school diplomas and college degrees compared to any other country and we had the greatest number of 15 year-old students in the world score at the highest levels on the 2006 PISA science test.

We produce more researchers and scientists and qualified engineers than our economy can employ, have even more in the pipeline, and we are one of the most economically competitive nations on the globe.

The major arguments made by proponents in favor of the CCSS collapse under a review of the empirical literature: (a) America‘s children are―lagging behind international peers in terms of academic achievement , and (b) the economic vibrancy and future of the United States relies upon American students out ranking their global peers on international tests of academic.

The proponents of the CCSS claim that the standards address critical skills necessary to compete in the 21st century. If so, why do they repackage 19th century ideas and skills? We only need to look at the mid 1800‘s and the Lancasterian Method used in London and some of America‘s cities and the Quincy, Massachusetts schools to see how the idea of standardization will play out. It did not work then and it will not work now.

The language arts and mathematics curriculum sequences embedded in the CCSS standards are nothing more than rehashed versions of the recommendations from the Committee of Ten in 1893 and the Committee of 15 in 1895; hardly 21st Century innovations. The standards do little to promote global literacy through cultural collaboration and cooperation. They do not stress socially-conscious problem solving or strategizing. In fact, a conscious is not even necessary because there is not any authentic critical thinking in the standards. They are inert, sterile, socially static, and in stark contrast to what the United States Council on Competitiveness called for:

The proponents of the CCSS have a problem: They have no data that demonstrates the validity of the standards as a vehicle to build 21st century skills nor as a means to achieve the things the business leaders say will be needed to operate in a diverse global environment. The CCSS are stuck in a time warp. A curricular time machine if you will, set to 1858.