NATIONALIZATION = HOMOGENIZATION or Common Core Kills School Choice

Today, I hear that Eric Cantor "...Hits Critics of Expanding School Choice".

This was interesting as I was given to understand that school choice was dead.  Hadn't heard that?  Take it from me - it's true!

How exactly are we going to offer students anything different - anything outside of Common Core - at any given public school in America?  How?  Forty-seven states have signed on to the Common Core.  Countless publishers and technology providers are pushing out countless materials all aligned with the Common Core, making it nearly impossible for anyone to find educational materials outside that sphere.  All state tests (at least 47 of them) - and now the ACT - will be geared to the standards.  All curricula is being written to align with the Common Core, essentially forcing all educational outcomes to be more or less the same.  Isn't that what nationalization of anything strives to do?  Where is the choice? 

It is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to produce an orange from the union of two pears.  Why is this concept so hard to understand?

Oh, yes, I guess you could CHOOSE to move your kid to a newer school across town - we humans always seem to believe new = better - but I remember hearing about a number of brand new schools built in rough areas of towns (to the tune of several million taxpayer dollars) that not only continue to fight vandalism but still-slumping student performance. 

Yes, sadly, you can change the building, but changing the building doesn't change the kids - good parents and teachers change kids.  Maybe someday taxpayers will recognize that and finally stop voting for bond issues that raise their property taxes to create pretty buildings that still continue to churn out marginally prepared/educated students.

Maybe a school across town feels like a safer option for your child.  Great, move him there.  You will get the same type curricula to fulfill the same set of standards with very little wiggle room as everyone has to pass the state tests in order to make sure their schools are graded C or above in order to prevent a state takeover of that school (yes, that is a good question, what IS the function of the local school board anymore?).  Your child will also have countless points of data collected on him as he sits in his seat, which will most probably stored in a 'cloud' somewhere, which will most likely be auctioned off to the highest technology bidder who will then produce educational materials from that data, that will collect even more intrusive data about your child.

Eric Cantor

...chided President Barack Obama for not including new money for the D.C. voucher program in his budget requests. (The administration has generally focused on funding existing slots, not bringing in many new students, despite what the program's supporters see as overwhelming demand.) 

He then said

"School choice is a threat to the status quo," Cantor said. "School choice protects families and children, not bureaucracies."

It is this kind of double-speak - this kind of ignorance of the way education and the Constitution works - that drives those that consider themselves 'conservatives' over the edge.

According to Cantor, Americans must go to the federal government to provide money (mother may I) to create educational programming for the communities found inside our states, and that situation will then create parental choice at the local level.  Seriously?  I can hardly even write that with a straight face!  Cantor must not be familiar with the conservative notion that government functions best closest to those that support and (ostensibly) benefit from it (taxpayers). 

This ignorance is exactly the reason legislators DO create the very bureaucracies they claim to hate that serve us up Common Core (and the other nationalized standards - and the associated data mining) and then feel good about telling parents and taxpayers that this method provides CHOICE in education.  Until legislators (and taxpayers!) themselves become educated about how government works, we will keep getting the same ignorant pontifications about the same ignorant (and liberty-sucking) government we have now, tomorrow. 

Garbage. Seriously, just garbage.

The new exciting article for today that made me crazy..."CareerTech director wants to link education, workforce to strengthen Oklahoma's economy.  Oklahoma's CareerTech Director Robert Sommers wants education and business officials to work together to create good jobs in the state and to prepare Oklahomans to fill them".

Not long ago, I wrote a blog entitled, "Made in the USA? Why Common Core Standards Will Never Produce A Stronger America". If you didn't read it (and if you didn't, shame on you ! LOL), my thesis was this,

our current education 'reform' nonsense is not going to prepare any kids for the current, non-technical, public service jobs available today and they shouldn't anyway as that is the job of the hiring company

This interview with Robert Sommers, Governor Fallin's current appointment to a newly created secretary position, "Secretary of Education AND THE WORKFORCE", explains how public schools (taxpayers) should be training kids for jobs (as though they are automatons) and to attend the four year college of their choice (to put more and more kids into the real world in debt without a job in Women's Studies, the major from the college of their choice).

“High school diplomas without any career technical instruction or additional well-rounded technical training really leaves you with an opportunity to continue education, but not very many living-wage job options,” Sommers said. 
“You have to have high academic, plus technical skills, foundation skills — those manifest themselves in CareerTech credentials or college degrees — and that's become the new minimum,” he said.

Gosh, I guess Sommers isn't acquainted with the way it used to be done (and often still is in rural America).  Kids left school at 8th grade (rather than being housed in an educational detention facility until the construct now called 12th grade), went out and found either a tutor (if they were wealthy enough) or a skilled tradesman under whom to apprentice until he could go out and open his own shop.

Even after America became mired in the Industrial Revolution and the notion that machines could do much of the work a set of matched mules or 2 guys on a saw could do, businesses - even those that became enormous industrial giants (FORD for example) - trained those that came to work for them ON THEIR OWN DIME.  These businesses didn't go to the local taxpayer with their hand out and say, "Pardon me ma'am, spare a farthing so I can train my line crew?"

When did American business become encumbered by the idea that it was the duty of the PUBLIC to pay a good portion of their business expense for them?  When did the head of IBM decide it was perfectly fine to join the Chamber of Commerce, give them a big fat check and get them to break the arms of taxpayers to fund their corporate expenses?  Have we ALL become idiots?

If so, SNAP OUT OF IT!

The only voice of reason in this whole article is Oklahoma Businessman Bob Funk, who says,

“Because of the emphasis that has been placed on our students to get a college degree, we've seen a dramatic decline in the number of qualified workers needed for skilled labor jobs,” said Bob Funk, chairman and CEO of Oklahoma City-based Express Employment Professionals.
“We have good-paying jobs that are ready for people, but it's not easy to find the workers to fill jobs in industries like welding, CNC machine programming, CDL truck driving, accounting and IT.”
Funk said educators and leaders should emphasize the opportunities available to young people looking for work in fields that are too often overlooked.
“My advice to job seekers, especially to those without college degrees, is to be sure you learn a skill or a trade, otherwise this economy is very tough,” he said. “Keep applying yourself to the opportunities you do have and work toward the career you want no matter what it takes.”

Well, YES!  Nowhere did Bob say, "Go out and spend your parents money on a useless degree at a college that will warp your world view simply because American education elitists are trying to turn America into a culture of simmering wimps in order to make big bucks and you're too ignorant to see it", but he probably would have driven the point home a lot quicker had he!

I've said it once and I'm sure I'll say it again another hundred times - AMERICANS SHOULD NEVER USE PUBLIC EDUCATION TO PREPARE STUDENTS FOR JOBS!  Public education is to provide basic skills and a set of basic knowledge to those unable to have that provided for them in their homes.  It is not to build a skilled workforce for big business.  Period.

Common Core State Standards Now Performing As "The Ring" in The Hobbit

As a practicing Christian, I find Ted Baehr's MovieGuide an indispensable help when trying to decide what movies I'll let my kids (all 12 and under) watch.

I actually subscribe to their email list and I got an email this morning that contained an analysis of The Ring from The Hobbit.  The article, "The Limits of Control: A Deeper Look Into the Hobbit's Worldview" was quite an interesting read for first thing this morning. 

The author explains - well, I might add - the personification of The Ring in the Hobbit. 

Frankly, the concept is absolutely basic, yet we never really strive for 'basic' as humans, so the concept remains difficult for us to grasp.  Humans tend to over-analyze any aspect of an issue before addressing the thing sitting in the open right under our noses. 

Life is about wrong and right, period.  A simple concept to be sure, but humans tend to botch it because we won't understand the nature of universal truth.  We don't really want to if truth be told, because truth abhors the human notion of, 'if it feels good do it'.  

Gone are the days that young people understand they shouldn't say, "My bad" when asking forgiveness for a wrong they have personally committed, for example.  When I was growing up, in the dark ages, you were taught to say, "I am sorry" with emphasis on the I part.  Why?  Because YOU were the one that committed the faux pax. 

It hurts, taking responsibility for yourself and your own actions, though.  It is much easier to turn over as much of your life as possible to someone who will simply run it for you.  Why make decisions for yourself when those decisions might not bring enjoyment or happiness?

The rise of government intervention into the lives of individuals today is a direct result of this shirking of responsibility.  The less society takes responsibility for themselves, the more the law clamps down.  It is true that John Adams once said about the Constitution, 

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Why?  Because those with morals - whether directly as a result of religion or not - will be more likely to govern themselves than those who do not.

Common Core is yet another instance of others running the lives of those that are percieved as being unable or unwilling to do it for themselves.  Those that most greatly desire the ubiquitous structure of something like Common Core are those mostly disinterested in the hard work it will take to change community schools on their own - as individual parents, teachers and citizens. They much prefer to live their lives in subservience to some faceless entity that will shoulder all the blows of life - something they can place blame on for the failures in their lives other than themselves (which, as I pointed out, brings some level of discomfort).

The simple truth is that life is hard if you do it right.  Consequently humans seem always on the lookout for that 'ring' to make everything easier by usurping the individual freedom of decision making through the power of mindless tyranny. Very sad, really, when you think about it.

Made in the USA? Why Common Core Standards Will Never Produce A Stronger America

Since 2010, the Chamber of Commerce, the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governor's Association (all private, dues-paid organizations - all who owe some debt of gratitude to the Bill Gates Foundation for helping them to fund their efforts to shove Common Core down the throats of American students and parents) have told us that America MUST have every student on the same educational page utilizing the Common Core State Standards in order to produce college and career ready Americans.  America must use Common Core in order to graduate students from high school.   America must have high school graduates become college graduates because American companies will be unable to fill job openings from a pool of any other than college and career ready graduates.  American students not college and/or career ready will lie impoverished in the street with neither a job nor career.

This idea of nationalized standards intertwined with college and career readiness has been proposed at many different times across American history really, but not so fully as when Bill Clinton became president and used friend Marc Tucker's (president of the National Center on Education and the Economy) seminal work, Tough Choices Or Tough Times, as the basis for his administration's education and economic policy.

First, a vision of the kind of national — not federal — human resources development system the nation could have. This is interwoven with a new approach to governing that should inform that vision. What is essential is that we create a seamless web of opportunities, to develop one's skills that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system for everyone — young and old, poor and rich, worker and full-time student. It needs to be a system driven by client needs (not agency regulations or the needs of the organization providing the services), guided by clear standards that define the stages of the system for the people who progress through it, and regulated on the basis of outcomes that providers produce for their clients, not inputs into the system.

This idea is silly of course.  Without either college or career ready national standards, America was exceeding every country in the world in nearly every area possible - including putting men on the moon - until 1964 and LBJ's great Elementary and Secondary Education Act. 

I have attempted to refute this silliness since 2010, however a recent interview with Mike Rowe (creator and director of the recently-ended Discovery show, Dirty Jobs), gave me the impetus I needed to meet these charges head on.

For nine years, Mike Rowe traveled across the United States working various manual and skilled labor jobs (at the request of viewers) while recording his efforts for the show.  You could say that Mike has actually made studying 'jobs' his vocation and he speaks eloquently and intelligently about the issue. 

In the interview, he asks why it is that we as Americans are asking students to leave high school and attend college, where they inevitably become indebted to study a vocation for which they may never even be able to find a job that will allow them to repay their indebtedness.

“We’re lending money we don’t have, to kids who will never be able to pay it back, for jobs that no longer exist. That’s crazy, right? That’s what we’ve been doing for the last forty years.”

He also explains that today, there is a plethora of skilled trades open and in demand. 

"In fact, there are 3 million jobs out there (in the US) that companies are having a hard time filling."

Of these, only 8-12% require a college degree.

Additionally, a recent interview with John Ratzenberger (Cheers), describes his reasoning for wanting to create a new series called, "Made in America"..."We're running out of people who know how to make things. The average age of someone who knows how to actually make something in manufacturing is 58 years old."

Goodness.  It seems to me as though neither JOBS nor CAREERS are the problem here.

So, what is the problem?  Why would we be sold a bill of goods telling Americans that we must have COMMON standards by which to educate our children for college and a career?

Well, I think it might have something to do with the fact that we tax many businesses at such an exorbitant rate, many can make better profit by using cheaper labor and materials from overseas, so overseas they go - taking their jobs with them.

How about the fact that for years, powerful labor unions have destroyed business after business (look at the American steel industry) as CEO's - too fearful of a work stoppage and their all-important bottom line - cave in to union demands of more and higher wages and pensions than can even be supported by the returns it generates.  

What about the fact that we simply don't teach the basics in public grammar school anymore.  Goodness, we don't even call it 'grammar' school anymore because we rarely teach grammar to young children anymore - it's passe' - it's not as exciting or stimulating as allowing young children to experiment with spelling and word usage in a non-graded journal of their own creation.  We don't teach kids how to sit still and copy letters, or sit still and write cursive, or, well heck, SIT STILL.  After all, in our world of creativity and repudiation of all that is boring, why in the world would we want to foster skills that train children to be patient and still and quiet?

Then there's the post WWII era mentality of, "our kids will have better than us", which gave rise to a generation of kids that believed they deserved to leave college and enter the workforce behind a desk with a six figure salary.  A generation, which itself, spawned a generation with an entitlement load of even greater toxicity level.  Today, many young people can't be bothered to be at work on time or respond to the needs of customers or bosses because work ethic has taken a backseat to the instant gratification afforded by everything in their lives, from fast food to personal communication.

Face it:  many kids today don't WANT to have a job in a warehouse - even if that job would more than sustain them.  This is viewed as 'grunt' work by our current coddled and entitled generation who has been told they 'deserve' everything from a big screen TV to phones and cars.

Yes, Marc Tucker and his ilk have done their job.  They have made "dirty jobs" a thought as unwelcome as the loss of an iPhone.  They have turned America into an amorphous, squeamish, bloated, government-dependent nightmare from which those of us who value "work" and all that can provide in life from money to wisdom can't awake.

So no Virginia, common national standards are not solution to the problems this country has with college or career - WORK is.

Next Generation Science Standards VS Oklahoma Academic Standards – Yet Another Lesson In Deception From The State Department of Education

A Comparison SO Easy - Even a Caveman Can Do it!

Here are the Kindergarten Oklahoma Academic Standards for Science and the Next Generation Science Standards.  Aside from maybe a few punctuation marks, can you really determine any differences?

Oklahoma Academic Standards - Science

Next Generation Science Standards

ROPE has evaluated the Next Generation Science Standards[i] (NGSS) and the Oklahoma Academic Standards[ii] (OAS).  As you can see from the screen shots above – we found them to be virtually identical – the same components – the same structure – the same exact verbiage in most of them in fact.  (I have posted screen shots from 6th and 9th grade as well at the bottom, so you can get the idea.)

There have been deletions from the NGSS to the OAS.  For example a unit on Global Warming found in the middle school and high school standards under ESS3.D: Global Climate Change and a section on Darwinian Evolution found in the NGSS high school standards under LS4.C: Adaptation were removed.   I did not review each section of either set of standards, however, because after I identified word-for-word language common to both sets of standards, there was truly no necessity to do so.  At that point it seemed completely logical and realistic to accept the sameness of the standards and provide previous reviews of the NGSS as means for evaluation.

Many reviewers have complained bitterly about the NGSS.  You can find very excellent evaluations here:

Review by the Thomas Fordham Institute[iii] (supporters of the Common Core State Standards)

Fordham issued a complete technical analysis which detailed numerous problems including that the NGSS, “never explicitly requires some content in early grades that is then assumed in subsequent standards.”  They give the standards a C.  (in the interest of full disclosure; Fordham gave Oklahoma’s PASS in science an F).

Education Reporter[iv] aggregated several reviews together but opined;

“The science standards, like those for math and English, are not based on empirical evidence of efficacy nor are they tested in any environment. They are fresh out of the box and will be field-tested statewide in any state that signs on.”

Shane VanderHart of Truth in American Education[v] highlights many criticisms of the Thomas Fordham study but also a review from Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, who approaches his critique from a faith-based perspective.  He quotes Beisner as saying,

“The standards frequently present science as “an enterprise promoted by consensus.” On the contrary, consensus is not a scientific but a political value, as should be clear to anyone familiar with the history of science, which chronicles scores or even hundreds of great reversals of once reigning paradigms—as documented, e.g., in Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  Science does not seek to attain truth by popular—or expert—vote, but by logical reasoning from premises provided by observations of the surrounding world.”

Erik Robelen writes in EdWeek “Draft of Common Science Standards Draws Friendly Fire[vi]” that the National Science Teachers Association finds a lack of clarity and coherence in the standards’ performance expectations and that the standards do not make clear 

“…what students are to know and be able to do, and how they should be taught those things.”

In “A Science Teacher’s View: The Backward-Engineered Common Core Science Standards[vii]”, an anonymous chemistry teacher who participated in developing the standards says,

“The "Next Generation Science Standards" have set out to backwards engineer the whole science curriculum into a coherent, self-validating tool. The goal all along was an instrument to market both teaching and assessment products to a captive education system, not to provide a framework for good teaching of the sciences.”

I personally like the way the NGSS (aka OAS) standards are organized.  In my opinion, the specific standards were easier to identify for each grade level than the PASS under which I taught.  

Unfortunately, I most dislike the FACT that our Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) would give the good citizens of Oklahoma whose trust and tax dollars they enjoy, a set of standards based entirely on the NGSS and then call them Oklahoman.  This smacks of such deception it is frankly hard to conceive.  If Oklahoma had intended to use a modified version of the NGSS, they had but to say so.  Instead, Oklahomans have been treated to various versions of how the NGSS were not “Oklahoma” standards and that the OSDE was writing THEIR OWN OKLAHOMA STANDARDS in order to create a set of standards more in line with “Oklahoma values”.

But then again, as we have pointed out numerous times, Oklahoma Title 70 (school law) dictates the use of Common Core State Standards[viii] in – not only English L/A and math as we have currently (though also re-named Oklahoma Academic Standards) – but also in Social Studies (which we have also shown to be simply a re-write of the National C3 Social Studies Standards[ix]) and science.  Consequently, it is no great mystery as to why the OSDE has chosen to take this direction.  They have limited choices here:

1.   Repeal the Common Core from state law (which our governor and state superintendent have sworn not to do) and allow districts to use whatever standards work for them – or allow the state to re-write our own standards our own way

2.   Accept all national standards provided by the various non-profit and federal agencies as declared by state law (the NGSS were created by Achieve and the National Research Council), keep their names and turn a deaf ear to the outcry from citizens

3.   Accept all national standards as declared by state law and re-name them in order to prevent citizen complaint

The Oklahoma State Department of Education has apparently decided upon #3. 

How do we explain the large number of educators and others we are told wrote, developed and reviewed these standards?  I have no intention of disrespecting any of the individuals listed.  I feel certain they had only the very best intent in this project.  Yet one only has to look at the pictures and read the standards to wonder exactly where any Oklahoman had a hand in these.

Long time Oklahoma teacher Claudia Swisher[x] wrote about being a ‘manipulated teacher’ in her blog and ended it with a quote from a friend’s blog – another teacher who said,

"Way too much of what passes for dialogue and scholarship around teachers' professional work has been managed, packaged and sold as authentic. It's not teacher leadership or advocacy. It's slick marketing, using the friendly faces of teachers."

The chemistry teacher described above had this to say about development of the standards,

“I was serving a term as a volunteer on my state's Math and Science Advisory Council three years ago. I'm only describing my personal experiences, and can't speak for the rest of the committee, but some of those experiences were really frustrating for me. For instance, representatives of the DOE came to our meetings and asked us to "integrate" the inquiry strand of our state science standards into the testable bullets. We wrote a beautiful report on the role of inquiry, and the interaction of science and mathematics. The DOE then edited our report without our input, "correcting" our references to laboratory work so that virtual simulations could be substituted.”

Another example comes from a paper[xi] I read recently upon which I wrote a blog[xii].  It describes well the art of the Delphi technique[xiii] – a way in which to achieve consensus in a group.  We have all been “Delphi’d” at one point I feel sure – it’s become one of the most popular techniques for government organizations to advance difficult and even unconstitutional projects because it simultaneously gives participants the idea they were included in important decisions while allowing leadership to maintain all control over the process.

Follow the links provided, do your own research and then contact the State Department of Education and tell them we will NOT accept these science standards.  Our current PASS were actually devised in Oklahoma by Oklahomans – let’s work to revise those, not copy a square reinvention of the wheel.

PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU TAKE THE TIME TO COMMENT ON THESE STANDARDS IN WHATEVER WAY YOU CHOOSE.  Here is the information on making public comment on the standards:

The draft of the Oklahoma Academic Standards for Science is available. Educators and the public are invited to submit written comments regarding the proposed draft. The public comment period is from Dec. 13, 2013, to Jan. 17, 2014. All comments must be received by 4 p.m. on Jan. 17, 2014. The standard 30-day public comment period has been extended by one week to provide ample time for educators and the public to provide feedback.

Submit Comments

E-mail okscienceeducation@sde.ok.gov or send written submissions to the Oklahoma State Department of Education at 2500 N. Lincoln Blvd., Oklahoma City, OK 73105-4599.

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[i] Next General Science Standards:  http://www.nextgenscience.org/search-standards-dci

[ii] DRAFT – Oklahoma Academic Standards for Science: http://www.ok.gov/sde/sites/ok.gov.sde/files/documents/files/DRAFT_Science%20Standards-12-13-13e.pdf

[iii] Fordham Institute Review of the Next Generation Science Standards; http://www.scribd.com/doc/147892835/Fordham-Institute-Review-of-the-Next-Generation-Science-Standards

[iv] Education Reporter, Next Generation Science Standards: Common Core Incognito; http://www.eagleforum.org/publications/educate/july13/next-generation-science-standards-common-core-incognito.html

[v] Problems With Next Generation Science Standards: http://truthinamericaneducation.com/next-generation-science-standards/problems-with-next-generation-science-standards/

[vi] EdWeek, Draft of Common Science Standards Draws Friendly Fire; http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2012/06/more_feedback_has_been_coming.html

[vii] Anthony Cody, A Science Teacher’s View:  The Backward-Engineered Common Core Science Standards; http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/05/a_science_teachers_view_the_ba.html

[viii] Governor Brad Henry, Addendum to the Race To The Top Grant; http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/phase2-applications/amendments/oklahoma.pdf

[ix]Liar Liar Pants on Fire – Bringing The OSDE Into Reality About Common Core http://restoreoklahomapubliceducation.blogspot.com/2013/10/liar-liar-pants-on-fire-bringing-osde.html

[x] Claudia Swisher; http://fourthgenerationteacher.blogspot.com/2013/09/my-name-is-claudia-and-im-managed.html

[xi] Stephanie Block, “Change Agents, Alinskyian Organizing Among Religious Bodies”; http://johntwo24-25.net/Volume%20II%20-%20Systemic%20Reform.pdf

[xii]Parental Rights VS The Collective – Or Tyranny VS Freedom http://restoreoklahomapubliceducation.blogspot.com/2013/12/parental-rights-vs-collective-or.html

[xiii]Using the Delphi Technique to Achieve Consensus; http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/1998/nov98/focus.html

6th Grade OAS Science Standards

6th Grade Next Generation Science Standards

9th Grade OAS Science Standards

9th Grade Next Generation Science Standards