SC and OK Dump Common Core - is LA Next?

By Kim D.

Two more governors have signed bills within the past week that dump Common Core Standards with the intention of replacing them with revised state standards focused on real improvement instead of a top-down, one-size-fits-all, federal hijacking of public education.

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley signed a bill on May 30th to abolish Common Core Standards by 2015, and yesterday Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin followed suit signing a similar bill of rejection.  Along with Indiana, the first state to reject Common Core implementation, this leaves only 42 states to wise up and stop a federal takeover of their children's education.

According to Education Week, Louisiana may be the next state to replace Common Core. Opponents of the English and math benchmarks used to judge students across most states are pressuring Jindal to take executive action to remove Louisiana from the Common Core and its standardized testing, known as PARCC. The Republican governor, a one-time supporter of the standards who is now a critic, said he's studying his legal options. He wants Louisiana to develop state-specific standards and has compared the standards to a federal takeover akin to "centralized planning ... in Russia."


Unfortunately for Jindal, a faction of Common Core supporters, back by the Superintendent of Education John White, are firmly opposed to such a move and claim the governor doesn't have the legal authority to yank Louisiana away from the education benchmarks.

White said the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education sets the standards under law, and he said a 2012 law spells out that the state must use nationally recognized content standards. "It's a pretty straight-up thing," White said. "It's no secret the direction in which we are going and the law is on our side. BESE has the power to set the standards, and BESE set the standards."

Common Core Math Explained - Prepare for a Jaw Drop!

By Kim D.

If you are a parent like me wondering how your child can escape the horrors of Common Core Standards and the dumbing down of a nation's entire educational system, for now it appears there is no true escape. Whether you home school or your child attends a public or private school, he or she will still need to be familiar with the new curriculum set in motion by Common Core to be successful when taking the SAT.

According to Leadership Institute's Campus Reform, Last week the SAT, America’s leading college entrance exam, was revamped to closely align with the Common Core curriculum according to an announcement by the President of the College Board and “architect” of Common Core, David Coleman.  And when Caleb Bonham demonstrated the ridiculousness of Common Core math to students at George Mason University, he got some jaw drops.

Common Core Conspiracies - Setting the Record Straight

By Kim D.

In March, Florida Representative Charles Van Zant may have gone a tad bit too far in his comments at the Operation Education Conference in Orlando when he blatantly claimed Common Core Standards and those who champion them in Florida were “promoting as hard as they can any youth that is interested in the LGBT agenda.”  Even more damning and bizarre, he claimed that Common Core proponents' aim is to  “attract every one of your children to become as homosexual as they possibly can."



At the center of this conspiracy claim is the American Institutes for Research (AIR). This organization has been selected to create the assessment tests to measure how students are performing with regard to Florida standards (i.e. Common Core). According to PolitiFact Florida, the claim that AIR educational materials promote LGBT values has some merit.  AIR has an active practice area creating materials for schools on LGBT Youth issues, in which it studies the youngsters’ experiences and offers recommendations for how to help them survive a world that can be harsh and judgmental.  However, AIR only provides materials on gay and lesbian issues to schools and organizations that request it.

Common Core officials and proponents are careful in their language that these are ONLY standards created at the federal level used to determine what children should learn in secondary education. They are quick to claim that the standards are NOT a mandate and do not specify what teachers must teach. 

However, teachers must teach students what they need to know to pass assessments tests. And if the creators of the standards and the assessment tests come from an ideology of promoting a social injustice agenda, then Van Zant's claims don't appear to be completely ridiculous. In fact, over the past year, sample worksheets linked to Common Core standards have flooded the Internet, and alarmed parents are starting to take notice. 

Take, for instance, the exercise presented to third graders about Ruby who finds a mysterious hairclip in the bedroom she shares with her husband. After students read the scenario, they are then asked to explore the significance of the hairclip and what bearing it may have on the future of Ruby's marriage.  If teachers are being encouraged to tackle adult subjects like adultery with eight-year-old children, is it a far stretch of the imagination that they won't also tackle LGBT subjects as well? 

And that presents the overall great divide over Common Core. Some parents believe teaching diversity and tolerance within the K-12 curriculum is necessary to the development of a healthy, well-rounded child, while others simply would like the government and idealogues to stop pushing the fast-forward button on their children's maturity. 

Common Core's Roots Lie in a Former Failed Program

By Kim D.

When Obama was running his presidential campaign in 2008 and was being criticized for lack of experience, why didn't he tout that from 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) and remained on the board until 2001? Could it be that he wanted to avoid a connection with the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, the brainchild of this educational initiative, or was it because the CAC was a total failure? 

Either way, parents beware - the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was the precursor for one of the latest bombs to drop on the American people: Common Core.

Here is how the CAC worked. Ayers was in charge of the educational policy and Obama was the money man with the collaborative goal of reforming education. Through this foundation, they funneled more than $100 million into community organizations and radical education activists. 

The CAC’s agenda channeled Ayers’ educational philosophy “which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism.” Ayers wrote that teachers should act as community organizers whose focus is provoking resistance to American racism and oppression.

Ultimately, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was a failure. It was a social justice experiment, not true education reform. When the CAC, prior to closing, conducted its own study of the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students, they found no evidence of educational improvement.

Even though the CAC was a failed educational experiment, Obama has brought the same ideology with him to Washington. Some of the key players in the Chicago experiment (David Coleman and Jason Zimba of Grow Network) are instrumental in writing the Common Core standards, and Arne Duncan, the former Chicago Public Schools' CEO,  is implementing them as the current US Secretary of Education.  

So far, Common Core is following the same tactic on a national level as the CAC did on the state level.  The outward claim is that Common Core standards establish clear, consistent guidelines for what every student should know and be able to do in math and English language arts from kindergarten through 12th grade. But, in reality, the ultimate goal is educational control at the federal level with the intention of using it to push a radical social justice agenda.