Republicans Are Pushing The Green Agenda In Oklahoma

Though Republicans are supposed to be skeptical of 'climate change' - it's even in our state Republican platform if anyone would read it - Oklahoma Republicans have been writing laws to allow for expanding green energy markets in Oklahoma.

Carbon sequestration is about nothing more than money - AND LOTS OF IT. Big businesses and the mega rich - like Bono - are donating to companies that are working on the 'new' economy of carbon taxes and sequestration of carbon dioxide.

Here, we run through a couple of names Trump is considering for appointments in his administration. Sadly, at least one of them has ties to climate change and the green new deal.

Well-Meaning Republicans Nearly Trampled The Free Speech Of Oklahoma Citizens - ROPE Report Short

SB1100 - a bill meant to help curb bullying after the suicide of Dagney Benedict - would have, instead, significantly curbed the freedom of speech Constitutionally enjoyed by Oklahoma citizens. 

As it is said, "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions" and we MUST stop our elected representatives from creating law from intentions, feelings, or pressure from special interest groups. The only 'intention' of law created in Oklahoma must be that to protect the individual rights of its citizens.

ROPE Report Short; Julianne Romanello - REPUBLICANS Keep Pushing DEM IDEALS ie Workforce Development

There really is a one world government cabal and all they want to do is have to have workers at the ready for the sustainable economies they are developing to keep themselves on top. In this video, we read a portion of the letter Democrat Marc Tucker (former CEO of the National Center on Education and the Economy) wrote Democrat Hillary Clinton in 1992. 

Here, Tucker and Clinton lay out the plan for training students through a 'school-to-work-pipeline' to train them for the jobs society will need, not for what they want to be when they grow up. 

It's all in black and white, yet REPUBLICAN legislators continue to push the School-To-Work-Pipeline created and pushed by the Democrats in favor of the one world government agenda! 

Find Julianne's blog here: www.heartsoverhexagons.com 

See the full video here: https://rumble.com/v4f2o53-rope-report-live-julianne-romanello-on-workforce-training-are-we-educating-.html

And here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH7vM_XkAJs

We're Not So Jolly About Common Core Clark - Vote NO For Clark Jolley For State Treasurer

Clark Jolley at the Jeb Bush, Foundation for Education Excellence National Summit on Education Reform in Boston, MA with former Oklahoma State Board of Education member Amy Ford. 

Clark Jolley was the lead author of the bill that adopted Obama-pushed Common Core State Standards throughout Oklahoma.

And the Winner IS....Betsy DeVos

And so, for those of you who didn't find out today, Betsy DeVos has secured the nomination for Secretary of Education chalking up a HUGE VICTORY in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee with an 12-11 vote strictly on party lines. Goodness! This sounds like it bodes well for bipartisan-collective-happy Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) moving forward.

So much for Trump's draining of the swamp.... 

What is the Senate GOP Caucus Saying About Education for the 2014 Session?

Today, the Oklahoma Republican Caucus released their Legislative Agenda for 2014.  Following is the portion on Education:

In education, it will be important in 2014 to protect and fund existing education reforms in order to improve student achievement and accountability through high standards and expectations. Workforce development continues to be a problem in the state, and Senate Republicans will work to pass legislation to increase the number of students obtaining critical post-secondary degrees and industry certifications.

Finally, the caucus will work to empower parents, educators and communities as they help every Oklahoma student achieve his or her potential. 

“For too long, our state’s education system has not kept pace with the changing times, hurting our students’ ability to compete for jobs in the 21st Century economy. In recent years, we have passed bold reforms that have increased standards and expectations to ensure every student—regardless of socio-economic or regional factors—can reach his or her true potential,” said Sen. John Ford, R-Bartlesville, and Senate Education chairman. “We owe it to our children, their parents and all Oklahoma citizens to continue to press for higher standards and accountability and expect more.”

After reading this, I have no choice but to determine that AGAIN this year, the Oklahoma Senate Republicans will push Governor Mary Fallin's vision of children either trained to work a job or pushed along a career path like the Europeans our country now seems to covet.  

In fact, the caucus said as much in the first sentence when the word PROTECT was used in the same sentence with "existing education reforms".  Of course, the "existing education reforms" are the Four Pillars of Education 'Reform'; Common Core (national standards), Turning Around Low Performing Schools, Teacher Accountability and the liberty-sucking, privacy-killing, State Longitudinal Database System - all of which tie Oklahoma directly to the federal government.

In a letter to Senators Brian Bingman and John Ford yesterday, I asked the question, "How can you be a Republican who supports Common Core when BOTH the RNC and the OKGOP have come out against the Common Core?"  I hope to have the answer to that very soon, but it can't be perplexing to only me that Mary Fallin solicited my vote in 2010 as a Republican by promising to protect me from the federal government - as did Janet Barresi - yet BOTH women went on to KEEP every single Brad Henry-adopted Obama-driven education reform.  They even went on to apply for a failed (thank goodness!) Race To The Top Early Learning Challenge grant and ADD a No Child Left Behind Waiver and a 5 million dollar State Longitudinal Database System grant.  How in the world can that make sense?  

Well, one has only to look at this page on the White House website detailing the Clinton/Gore Educational plan to find the answer.  Let's see how far off the mark Oklahoma's Republicans are from the Clinton/Gore plan;

1. Raising Standards and Holding Schools Accountable for Results
2. Improving the Quality of Education with High Quality Teachers
3. Expanding Access to Technology in Schools
4. Keeping Young People on the Path to Success

Now let's look at the Oklahoma Republican plan:

1. High Standards and Expectations (Common Core/national educational standards + A-F grading)
2. Teacher/Leader Effectiveness (here is the TLE page on the OSDE website)
3. All schools have had to add broadband in order to take the new Common Core tests.  Recently, schools were mandated by the OSDE (more like threatened) to perform a 'stress test' on their computers to make sure they were ready for all the testing to be done on computers (in order to teach children critical thinking).  
4. Engaging education, business and government leaders in a dialogue about what governors can do to more closely align K-12, universities, community and technical colleges and workforce training providers with future labor demands. (A direct quote from Governor Fallin's National Governor's Association Education Initiative)

In fact, why is no one asking these questions, "Excuse me Education 'Reformers', why do you think YOUR program is better than Clinton/Gore's - or any of the other near exact copies that have come before?  Simply because you're doing it under the Republican banner?  Are you trying to tell me that failed programs somehow work better if there is an 'R' after them?"  

Frankly, it matters not whether a Democrat or a Republican introduced these education 'reforms'.  What is important, however, is that they've never worked.  NEVER.  If these ideas produced such excellent results for Clinton/Gore, why are states still banging their heads against the wall wondering how to get their students to succeed?

Why, instead of doubling down on the arbitrary HIGH STANDARDS hogwash, aren't we looking at factors like;

1. Discipline.  In this Politically Correct environment where every student has a perceived RIGHT to do whatever he feels to do at any given moment, is there really any wonder kids are learning anything anywhere? Self-discipline must be taught consistently, valued and modeled where kids spend a huge part of their day - school.
2. The breakdown of the family.  When kids can't be sure if there's food at home because mom might have used the money for drugs, or when mom's having to work three jobs just to keep food on the table, kids could care less about the future - all they know is that the here and now stinks. How are schools meeting these individual needs?
3. Real school leadership.  Lecturing kids about consequences that never come tell them there are no consequences for their actions.  If there are no consequences, there is little reason to do anything you don't want to do.
4. Unfunded mandates.  Schools don't need as much money as they think they do to adequately educate a child, but that fact doesn't matter when they're not getting half enough to do even a poor job because administrative costs suck money out of the classroom.  There should be MASSIVE and widespread audits at the OSDE to find and yank back money better spent ON KIDS rather than FOR KIDS.
5. A love of America.  Whatever the circumstances in the world, students in past decades could at least agree on that ideal.  An ideal broad enough to include everyone.  An ideal that brought students together under a banner of agreement and pride.  Today's children are chopped into little groups under the banner of 'diversity' in order to make it easier for them to march over others while marching toward equality.

Yet, instead of looking at these very real, very important issues, our Republican leaders choose to run education in Oklahoma wielding a punitive STICK made of tired, 'new' education 'reform' wood - attempting to create consensus by force where individuality should be lauded instead.

Recycled programs forcing uniformity and micromanagement will NEVER provide students a well-rounded education.  

Don't forget; we put men on the moon while engineers still used slide rules. But then, these men and women were products of a broad-based classical style education, doled out in classrooms with discipline instead of political correctness, where real leadership was provided on a local basis and recognized the sovereignty of parents over their child's education.  How in the world can we recreate these individuals today using a one-size-fits-all, narrow-in-scope, standardized-test-based  machination created by private organizations whose interest in profit-bearing educational products far outweighs their concern for individual students and families, or the propagation of the American way?  The answer is simple; we can't, and we won't.

Open Letter to Oklahoma Senators Brian Bingman and John Ford

Dear Senator Bingman and Senator Ford,

I am writing you today because as a former public school teacher (and now a teacher in my own home school) I understand you desire high academic standards for Oklahoma's students.  I understand you desire Oklahoma to be economically competitive.  I understand you desire students stay in school, graduate and go on to be successful in college or a career.  I also understand you to be Republicans.

Republicans are a group of individuals that come together because of a generally shared ideology.  Historically, Republicans have been the party of smaller government and greater self-discipline; economic freedom and lower taxes; individuality over the collective; and state control over federal control.

Republicans have a platform that delineates these shared ideologies at both the state and national levels.  Oklahoma's platform is very specific regarding Education, outlining various methods by which we choose to educate our children.  Among these are;

1. We support curricula that promotes national sovereignty and opposes one-world government and global citizenship.
2. We oppose all un-funded mandates.
3. We believe a public school should protect the privacy of any personal information or data collected by the school on a student or his family and we oppose data mining by a public school.
4. The Federal Department of Education should be eliminated and defunded and its functions transferred to the States. We oppose the imposition of national curricula, testing and teacher certification, Common Core State Standards, and federally mandated programs such as “No Child Left Behind” or “Race to the Top, and PARCC testing.

AND

• We oppose participation by Oklahoma in the Common Core State Standards because it transfers control of local schools, student data and curricula from the local school boards.

So strongly do we as Republicans believe in this last point as documented in our platform, Republican Committee Men and Women from all 50 states came together at their annual meeting and voted for a Resolution repudiating the Common Core State Standards at the national level (April 2013).  Not only was this issue addressed at the national level last spring, but this winter, the State Republican Committee voted for a Resolution repudiating the Common Core State Standards (January 2014).

Quite apparently, the Common Core State Standards are an issue of exceptional interest to Republicans.

Why?  Let's look at the Common Core in direct relation to the pieces of the platform transcribed here, by number.

1.  Please note; on the Common Core State Standards website;

 

Individuals are not only going to compete globally, but whole communities will as well...
 

Quite apparently, American education is bad.  We must look to other countries to tell us how to improve our educational standards, even though no other country in the world has America's unique form of government or level of individual freedom.

2.  The Common Core State Standards were nothing if not an unfunded mandate.  

Agreed to as early as 2009 when Oklahoma took State Fiscal Stabilization Funds (SFSF), Common Core entered state law in 2010 in order to make more competitive our application to the federal government for a Race to the Top grant.  Oklahoma received no money from our RtTT application.  Common Core was not removed from law.  Consequently, every RtTT-related legislative item was left unfunded.

3.  From the very beginning, the Common Core initiative has gone hand in hand with the collection of individual student data.   

Shawn Bay, CEO of eScholar, made this fact very clear at last years' Datapalooza - a conference sponsored by the White House and the US Department of Education in Washington, D.C. - when he made the statement that, "Common Core is the glue that actually ties everything (student data collection) together.”  In fact, Mr. Bay created his company in order to use data to 'manage' student data and track children from school to career and college using the Common Core.  There is simply no way to do this without individual student data - tracking individual students from cradle to career, as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is familiar with exclaiming.  All one has to do today, is search the words "education" and "datamining" and pages full of articles and papers documenting the use of data collection as an education tool by our federal government.

Though legislators and educators alike have been told that the unprecedented collection of data on school children is to prevent drop outs by following children longitudinally across their education arc, proponents fail to explain how interwoven into the fabric of educational data collection are President Obama's pollsters of the last election, Nate Silver and Dan Wagner - the men who created a  database the likes of which Maxine Waters has referred to as

“...a kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life...[which is] going to be very, very powerful.”

4.   Not only does the Republican party repudiate Common Core, but federal involvement in education as well.

While Governor Fallin's Executive Order addresses federal government intrusion into public education, her statements are equivalent to closing the barn door after the horses have run out.  Why?  Because in 2009, under Governor Brad Henry, the state took State Fiscal Stabilization Funds from the Obama Administration.  Inside the application for SFSF funds, Governor Henry agreed to 

Page 98 of the America Competes Act speaks specifically to what this "Improving Standards Assurance" is.  This is what ROPE calls the Four Pillars Of Education Reform; A State Longitudinal Database, College and Career Ready Standards (Common Core), Turning Around Low Performing Schools and Teacher Accountability Measures.

Essentially, Oklahoma became slave to the federal government for their education 'reform' package for taking millions of dollars in ARRA funds, a great chunk of which simply disappeared.

But that was just the beginning of the Federal strings to Common Core.  After the ARRA funds, there came the Race to the Top (RtTT) application.  Though Oklahoma got no money from that application, we did get Common Core cemented in state law (SB2033) because Oklahoma got 20 points on their RtTT application for providing "A description of the legal process in the State for adopting standards, and the State’s plan, current progress, and time frame for adoption." (pg 53)

Following RtTT, there was the No Child Left Behind Waiver.  Again, in order to get the waiver, Oklahoma had to agree (again) to the Four Pillars of education reform.
Not to be rude, but please, tell me again how Common Core is NOT a federal dictate.  Please tell me again how there are no federal strings, how these standards are 'state led' or how Governor Fallin's EO does anything to actually cut the federal strings to Common Core and Oklahoma's other education 'reforms'.

In closing, it is not too late to stop Common Core in Oklahoma, but any or all of the seven bills currently on file this legislative session must be heard.  Yes, it is true - many districts have spent millions of dollars on Common Core implementation.  This situation isn't untenable.  If Common Core is removed from law (and the testing that supports it put on moratorium until a better alternative than the current, expensive, Common Core aligned tests are decided upon), it would be possible for districts to truly exhibit the local control so many Oklahomans covet.  Some schools would most assuredly move forward with their implementation of Common Core, but others, seeking to please and appease their district parents, could scrap it and find something that worked better for that school, the students, the parents and the district.

Please allow any or all of these bills a hearing in committee and permit them to be moved to the Senate floor. One of the beauties of America's truly unique government is that Representatives, chosen by the people, have the voice of the people in their seat of government.  The people can't have a voice, if their representatives do not give them one by blocking bills from committees hence further discussion and vote.  Please allow the Oklahoma State Senate to represent its people.

Thank you for your time and patience

Blessings,
Jenni White
President
Restore Oklahoma Public Education



IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS FOR REFERENCE:

America Competes Act:  http://arpa-e.energy.gov/sites/default/files/documents/PL-110-69.pdf

Oklahoma's SFSF Application:  http://www2.ed.gov/programs/statestabilization/stateapps/ok.pdf

Oklahoma's No Child Left Behind Waiver Application:  http://ok.gov/sde/sites/ok.gov.sde/files/ESEA-FlexAmend8-12.pdf

Oklahoma's Race to The Top Application:  http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/phase1-applications/oklahoma.pdf

Governor Fallin's Executive Order 2013-40:  http://arpa-e.energy.gov/sites/default/files/documents/PL-110-69.pdf

Anti-Common Core Resolution Passes Oklahoma State GOP Committee

The "Resolution To Protect Oklahoma's Education System" was passed today (January 18, 2014) by the Oklahoma GOP Committee during their regular meeting.  This resolution records the will of the Oklahoma Republican Party Executive Committee to direct Republican floor leaders to both slate Common Core bills for hearing in Committees as well as Republican Committee chairs to allow a hearing for Common Core bills so that an HONEST debate on the issue may be had and citizens may be directly represented by their lawmakers.

Grassroots Republicans felt it important to elucidate this point since a Common Core repeal bill was blocked from committee hearing by both House Education Committee Chair, Representative Ann Coody and Senate Education Chair, Senator John Ford during both 2011 and 2012.  Last year (2013), a bill was written mid-session by Speaker of the House T.W. Shannon, but failed to gain a hearing in the Senate.  

In addition to stressing the necessity for transparency, the Resolution echoes Governor Fallin's Executive Order (2013-40) "to safeguard against any threat of federal intrusion" and to honor and comply with its fifth directive declaring that Oklahoma Academic Standards will "not jeopardize the privacy of any Oklahoma student or citizen" by urging the cessation of state and federal funds to continue development or usage of the State Longitudinal Database System.

The resolution should assist Governor Mary Fallin and State Superintendent Janet Barresi in understanding clearly the will of the majority of grassroots Republicans on the issue of the Common Core State Standards Initiative (AKA Oklahoma Academic Standards) during this election year. 

ROPE would like to thank Cyndi McArtor, Chairman of Delaware County for sponsoring this resolution as well as Holly Gerard and others for their efforts in creating and editing this collaborative work.  

Liar Liar Pants On Fire - Bringing The OSDE Into Reality About Common Core

October 21st, Julia, Lynn and I went to visit the Carter County Republicans.  Chairman Anna Flat asked us to attend and speak about the Common Core.  She wanted to hear both sides of the issue so she also asked the Oklahoma State Department of Education to appear.  Joel Robison, Chief of Staff for Superintendent Barresi came.

As I've said before, we don't have a problem with Joel - we don't have a reason to - he's never been anything but decent to us - we just don't like the direction in which our State Superintendent is taking Oklahoma education.  We also have a problem with the fact that Dr. Barresi herself frequently embellishes the truth, spins fact, regularly talks around questions without answering them and has a tendency to be unkind to dissenters.

One of the biggest "truth embellishment" of late is the fact that Oklahoma has Oklahoma Academic Standards instead of Common Core - well, at least she doesn't mention Common Core now that it has become a political hot potato - she only chooses to talk about "her" new Oklahoma Academic Standards. 

So, to kill two birds with one stone, I put together a brief slide presentation to cover BOTH the lie that Common Core is "state led" (aka local) and the truth about the Oklahoma Academic Standards.  Below are the slides with captions - almost all are screenshots either from Common Core or OSDE websites. (If you can't read the slides, click on them and they will open to original size).

The Common Core website shows that the CCSS are licensced and copywrited by the NGA and CCSSO.  They also provide a liability waiver in case you hate them so both the NGA and CCSSO can say, "Too bad, so sad, we're not to blame for them."  If, however, you want to sue for damages done by using the standards, you'll have to do it in DC!  very local - VERY Oklahoma!

Our RoadMap To the Common Core showing the "four pillars" of education 'reform'.  1.  Common Core State Standards (in blue), 2.  a State Longitudinal Database System, 3.  Using the Turnaround model on failing schools (created by Bill Gates and used in Chicago while Arne Duncan was superintendent there! - also in blue) and, 4.  Teacher accountability measures (yellow).  All four have been dictated by the USDE to state who took the SFSF funds (all 50), Race to the Top grants and/or a No Child Left Behind Waiver.  Gosh, the feds didn't want states to use them, did they?

 

 

So, business leaders met with state governors to create the standards because businesses were complaining they couldn't find any good workers.  What happened to OJT?  Why pay for OJT yourself, if you can get governors to pay for it FOR you through a series of public/private partnerships, tax breaks and a complete overhaul of the nation's education system from a learning model to a workforce training model?

But aren't we led to believe that the CCSSI movement was an 'organic', 'grassroots' education movement that filtered UP from the states in 2010?  This is not the case, obviously.  The CCSSI were being discussed by governors and business leaders for years!

Here is David Coleman - the 'architect' of the CCSSI.  Yes, he worked 5 years in health care, in financial institutions and did PRO BONO (?) work in education?  HE'S writing educational standards?  Interesting.

Dr. Barresi hired John Kramen out of Achieve.  His CV is available for download in the State's NCLB waiver application which can be found here; http://www2.ed.gov/policy/eseaflex/ok.pdf.

Just a couple screen shots of Ed.gov showing the four pillars of education reform for the Race to the Top grant.  Consequently, many states adopted the Common Core simply to be competitive for the money.  Oklahoma put CCSSI in state law in 2010 via SB2033, but Brad Henry put English/LA, Math, Social Studies and Science 'common core' standards into state law via executive order to increase the states

Mary Fallin - against the wishes of the Republican Party via a Resolution Against the Common Core State Standards - is advocating for the Common Core as NGA Chair.  The RNC resolution was written by Oklahoma's own State Committeewoman Carolyn McClarty and signed by the State Committeeman and Committeewoman of each state.

So, we've gone from Reading, Writing and Arithmetic to Accountability, Achievement and Alignment?

Here, we're told that the OSDE is using Common Core.  CCSSI is being portrayed as an umbrella covering every aspect of Oklahoma Standards.

Letter from Brad Henry indicating that ALL Common Core State Standards were adopted by Oklahoma in order to get a Race to the Top Grant.  The left screen shot is of the OSDE website where the school code is found.  This is a screenshot of that page.  The right is the letter that can be found in Oklahoma's RTT grant on the Ed.gov website.

Screen shot showing that when you click on the URL for the English/LA standards, they go directly to the CCSSI document.

Here are some combined screenshots showing where every link to the English/LA standards go on the OSDE OAS page.

Here are the links to the OAS math standards page.  Note that the link to the Math standards themselves go directly to the CCSSI document.

Here is the screenshot for the OAS Social Studies.  The underlined language and the box in the lower left shows that the Oklahoma Academic Standards for Social Studies include the Common Core State Standards.

This is a comparison of the National Council for Social Studies webpage about the national Social Studies standards and the FAQ page of the CCSSI webpage showing that the CCSSO worked on both standards and they are "state led".

The left is a screen shot from the Oklahoma Academic (C3) Standards Implementation Guide that shows that the OSDE is teaching our Oklahoma children that we live in an "American Constitutional Democracy".  I have asked Constitutional scholars about this term - they do not know what it means.  We live in a Republic - as I have written before.  The right side are screen shots from the National Social Studies standards.  Please note that they ALSO refer to America as a Constitutional Democracy. 

The left side of this slide contains screen shots from the National History Standards.  The right side contains screen shots from the Oklahoma Academic Standards for History.  Please NOTE:  C3 is the same (one c is Citizen, the other is Civic Life), they BOTH have the four main areas as shown.  The national standards have something called an Inquiry Arc and the OAS have something called a 'coherency storyline' - these are essentially the same thing. 

Lies, Damned Lies and the Common Core

 

Hopefully, as a writer who frequently enjoyed 'inheriting' ideas from others, Mr. Twain won't despise me too deeply for my turn of phrase.  I even hope to think he'd agree!  I can't imagine Huck Finn ever subjecting himself to something that made him just like everybody else - or doing anything that everyone else was doing - ie a one size fits all, common standard of education.

It is in this vein that I present to you a word-for-word, blow-by-blow of State Superintendent Janet Barresi's visit with the Wagner County GOP June 2013.  This was written by a woman named Karen Cuellar - an Oklahoma home schooling mom.

I refuse to edit or manipulate in any way her original email.  She hit this out of the ballpark - she needs no assistance.  Please, read, pass on and become involved TODAY!

“I went to the Wagoner County GOP monthly meeting on Thursday night to see what Barresi could possibly say to defend or sell Common Core to the public. Luckily, this was a group of very informed, anti-common core voters who had done their research. She spent a good 30 minutes on “fake fluff” – really avoiding the details of Common Core and speaking in generalities on how great it was. I could tell the audience wasn’t falling for the usual politician talk.

We were asked to write questions down and submit them to be answered to keep the crowd under control since this is a very controversial topic.

The first question chosen was mine, and it was this: “Our two Republican Senators and Speaker Shannon have publicly come out against Common Core. The RNC and the Oklahoma state GOP both have added very specific language against Common Core to the party platforms. How do you reconcile that - running as a Republican, on a Republican ticket, when your stand is in direct opposition to our party platform?”

I think it caught her by surprise. She seemed uncomfortable, fumbling for an answer, and replied that the party platforms had language about “government intrusion” but not specifically Common Core.  I held up a copy of both platforms and called her out on it. The RNC has 2 full pages that specifically name and deal with all of the aspects of Common Core, and our state platform has one paragraph, but also specifically names Common Core. I had copies of both.

She seemed irritated by that, and then continued down a path that had absolutely nothing to do with the party platform or the direct question I asked. I could tell the crowd noticed it, and was just as upset as I was that she didn’t answer the question.

There were several other questions pertaining to the reading parts of Common Core, specifically removing the Classical literature and replacing it with technical manuals. She said numerous times that the reading was optional, and only “suggested” reading material. She also said over and over that teachers have the choice to pick what they want their students to read.

She said Common Core would cut down on testing, give teachers and parents local control, and that every teacher she has spoken to LOVES it. She said she had not heard from one teacher in opposition to it. She said that teachers wrote the standards and there was no federal government involvement in writing them.

She also explained how teachers loved that little Billy could move from Oklahoma to another state and be on the exact same page once he arrived at his new home. He would not have to adjust, he could just pick up where he left off in the classroom. Really? That doesn’t sound like local control? That’s also in direct violation of our constitution – I honestly couldn’t tell if she was being willfully deceitful, or is truly that ignorant of her own pet project and the hypocrisy she speaks.

Another homeschooler asked how these standards would affect homeschoolers trying to get into college. She looked baffled, and said there wasn’t any effect on homeschoolers, why should there be? She looked around the room for answers as to why someone would ask this, so I chimed in.

I explained, as a homeschooler I won’t be teaching the Common Core curriculum to my children, therefore they would have difficulty passing the tests based on Common Core to get into college. She replied that Common Core was only “standards”, NOT CURRICULUM, (she said this many times) and said it has NOTHING to do with curriculum. I found that odd since several curriculum companies have come out with new editions of curriculum claiming to have “adjusted to the Common Core standards” so again, I’m not sure if she’s that ignorant, or is being deceitful about what is happening.

Every answer in my opinion was a lie, based on a list of facts I had gathered from several resources. I had several people come up to me after and thank me for standing up to her, and one said she’d like to go up to her and tell her directly that she didn’t believe a word that came out of her mouth. I agreed.

Sadly, I voted for this woman. I was ignorant of what was going on and did my basic duty to vote for the “R.” Never again. “R’s” aren’t always conservative and they don’t always follow the constitution. Republicans have completely abandoned shutting down the Department of Education. At one point, that was our goal. Not anymore - Now, RINO’s like her want to grow it bigger and keep throwing money at it (stolen from other members of society) while only lining corrupt politicians (like her) pockets with our hard earned money.

I’m tired of Republicans screaming about socialism and communism and then accepting it in Education. If you are against Obamacare, you should be against the Department of Education completely. Our constitution does not allow the federal government any power in this area, so why do we allow it and tolerate it? Why do we allow people like Barresi to come in and say she’s a conservative Republican and then destroy our constitution?

Either embrace it, return education to the state level to be decided upon and stop taking “incentives” from the government that keep us enslaved, or we will replace you with someone who will.

Barresi forgets that we are the masters – we tell her what we want and how. She seems to think it’s the other way around and she’s going to push Common Core through regardless of how we feel. I hope her decision to ignore Oklahomans and their opposition to Common Core costs her the job she has been sent to do. I hope we can replace her with a constitutional opponent that believes in restoring our framework rather than destroying it further."

Amen Karen, Amen.

(Edited by breaking into paragraphs to make easier reading)