Some Facts on Common Core

Instead of pros and cons, let's look at some facts.
Fact:  Common Core is the fundamental transformation of the education system.
Fact: Within the 2009 stimulus bill there was millions of $$ given to the DOE.  The DOE said to cash strapped states, if you would like some $$ all you have to do is adopt the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) plus develop a P-20 Longitudinal Data Base.  P-20 LDS is the data base that will be used to track children and teachers starting in pre-school through the age of 20.  There are fields for birth and death.  If your son or daughter happens to get into trouble say in the 6th grade, that will be tracked.  Gov. Quinn recently stated that he wants to start tracking at birth.  Search Illinois State Fiscal Stabilization Fund to read about this.  Fact:  Millions of Bill & Melinda Gates' Foundation $$ can be found woven throughout most all of CCSS.  Fact: At the 2009 Nat'l Conf. of State Legislatures Bill Gates is on video saying we will only know if this effort has succeeded when the curriculum & tests are aligned to these standards!!  Wait a minute..I thought these were exclusive of each other.  That's what the administrator's are saying.  Fact:History shows us this is not a new thought.  In a letter to Hilary Clinton shortly after she was elected senator, Mark Tucker, the then Pres. of Nat'l Center on Ed. & Economy eerily states that his plan to remold the entire American system into a seamless web that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system for everyone coordinated by a system of labor market boards at the local, state and fed. levels where curriculum and job matching will be handled by counselors accessing the integrated computer based program can be achieved. Fact:  The Nat'l Gov. Assoc. and the Council of Chief State School Officers (NGA & CCSSO) have copyrighted these standards.  Do you know who these people are and what that means?? The NGA & CCSSO are private trade  groups.  They receive taxpayer $$ and received millions of $$ from the B&M Gates Found.  They are not required to make much info. public.  Copyrighted means no changes and nobody to call if one has questions.  A quick aside.  The Nat'l PTA received millions $$ from B&M Gates Found.  Are we seeing a bit of recurring thread here yet???  Fact: David Coleman is said to be the architect for ELA.  He is quoted as saying the 2 most pop. forms of writing in H.S. today is personal writing or presentation of personal writing.  The problem with that is as you grow up you realize people in this world don't give a @#it about what you feel or think.  He also doesn't have  a problem with the book Dreaming in Cuban. That is one of the text exemplars.  In it the character Hugo can be found biting Felicia's breast and leaving purplish bruises, and Felicia learned that Hugo likes to be slapped.  Hugo likes to call Felicia his @#$ch.  That's one of the non-fiction choices.  On to math.  Jason Zimba, the lead writer of the math standards acknowledges that ending w/CC in H.S. could prelude students from attending elite colleges.  In many cases the Core is not aligned with the expectations at the collegiate level.  If you want to take calculus your Freshman year in college you will need to take more mathematics than is in the CC .  His words, not mine.  Fact:  Dr. Sandra Stotsky and Dr. James Milgram, the only two educators on the validation cmte.  DID NOT sign off on the standards.  They felt they were too low.  Fact:  The vision is to have each child on their own computer.  Preferably a Microsoft computer.  Oh, there's that B. Gates again!!!  With each computer comes a student identifier, but don't worry, all info. will be secured!  Or will it?.  Remember from earlier in this post, P-20LDS??  Tons of personal student data will be asked.  inBloom, a company that is leading the way to put student info. in/on the Cloud funded by guess who?? B&M Gates Found. states on the inBloom website they cannot guarantee that the data can be protected.  There is also what is called a brief on the DOE website entitled Enhanced Teaching and Learning Through Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics.  Why is there a 77 page
"brief" about data mining??  There is also another little ditty on the DOE website called Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance:Critical Factors for Success in the 21st. Century.  This is a great read to understand where all this is going.  I think this is the one where they call our children human capital!  One last fact before I close.  The Family Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) that has been in place to protect our children has been watered down the last 2-3 years to now state that anyone that can claim they have an education purpose can obtain your child's info. Think 3rd party vendors that can access your child's  info. w/o you even knowing it.  O.k. one more, Fact:  HR-0543 in the IL house has been introduced to slow things way down and take a look at all this.  Please look at this and ask your congressman/woman to support this bill.  We owe it to our children/grandchildren to understand where these standards came from and where they are going.  Please take a look at the website stopcommoncoreillinois.org and read what is going on in our state and the rest of the country.  As much as I think this might have started with good intentions to help our children, it was quickly co-opted by big names with even bigger dollars looking to make even more money.  They want our children and teachers to be the guinea pigs with something that has never been tested just so they can get the data.  One last tidbit.  Did you know that a small portion Pearson Publishing that does a ton of printing of school books is now owned by the country of Libya??  I love our schools and teachers and want nothing but the best for our/my children.  Please do some homework of your own and find out what this is all about.   If fully implemented our wonderful teachers will be nothing more than facilitator's for test takers.  I think we want our teachers to be role models and guardians of our children while we cannot be with them.  We want teachers to show them, with a parent's help and guidance, how to become blossoming, well educated individuals and well rounded American  citizens looking to find their own place in the world.  We do not need a nameless, faceless person choosing what they will do the rest of their lives because of a test score.