Common Core: The New Big Brother

Ever see a rather bi-partisan interview, and with Glenn Beck? Yeah it exists, naysayers, and s pertinent for all parents, teachers, students etc to view...to get a shady view into the current climate and future of American Education, and how it is being dumbed down and becoming an arm of Big Brother. The interview given by Glenn Beck regarding Common Core Standards can be found at http://truthinamericaneducation.com/common-core-state-standards/glenn-beck-outs-the-common-core/ and I provide my own commentary. I am including my commentary and the moment in the video that inspired it

0:34- If indeed we are all judged by the same mediocre national benchmark (I 99% guarantee we will) then yes....no one can be "best", we will just aspire for mediocrity which will likely decline, so eventually we aspire for very little academically. Dumbing us down for sure, folks...right here right now.

1:19 True true true, by high school, 70% of content in Language Arts will NOT be "literature" in the sense as we know it. Already students read white0washed, watered down excerpts from great (and not so great) novels and the like; now they will barely even get that. Instead they get workplace documents and informational text. When I heard this I thought, wow, cool! I could teach a unit on Grapes of Wrath- we would read the whole novel, then I can bring in old and new newspaper articles about economic recession/repression, read blogs, skype, make blogs, do all this cool stuff with this addition of informational text. But, I am wrong. t really is looking at instruction manuals, phone books, resumes, and the like. Yes, that has a part in real life, that is not the argument. But how intellectually challenging and stimulating can an instruction manual be, especially since you aren't constructing a widget but merely answering multiple choice questions about the manual itself? How will this produce the next Einsteins and Steven Hawkings? Oh, it won't. It will just produce workforce drones. Part of the P-20 school to work cradle to grave pipeline, sponsored by the US government and big business.

1:51 Yes! discovery of content! That sounds like when you read something and get ah "aha" moment and start googling and researching and a whole other world of knowledge opens up as you read, experiment, test, and question. But instead, you are given the content. That's it. The Gettysburg Address does not delve deep into the societal issues of the time and a relationship to something today, it does not make it relevant. You read it because. Why? Because. Now answer the multiple choice question, kids. Let's move on. Anyone else flabbergasted by this? (Sadly I am NOT. Our schools today follow this model very often. Common Core just ensures it happens. always.)

2:37 Yep. Federal control of education. Which is, by the way, illegal, against the GEPA act, but surely they won't include that in the "informational text" taught. See the GEP:A Act here http://3rseduc.blogspot.com/2011/03/illegality-of-many-current-educational.html

2:47 Homeschooled students might not pass the SAT, because they did not "learn" the common core way. This means it's my way or the highway, public school common core or nothing. You WILL OBEY. And, since these SATs and other exams must change to reflect Common Core, guess who benefits? The ETS (http://3rseduc.blogspot.com/search/label/ETS) , the textbook companies (we need new tests and texts!), skinner style mind conditioning... and who does not benefit? The people. Our future.

And to reiterate the homeschool point, home school could be required to teach common core. There may be no escape. Resistance is futile.

6:32 yes....CCS (Common Core Standards) "sound' like they promote rigor, relevancy, real learning but they DO NOT. CCS serves as government getting an even tighter grip on, really, thought control. 1984, anyone?



Part II of the video, data, how  I love to hate you. Mentioned more than once is a data collection "wish list" which can be found in a blog post of mine, dated 2011 (so it's nothing new folks) at http://3rseduc.blogspot.com/2011/10/big-bro-knows-everything-thank-you.html I apologize for shoddy formatting but nevertheless feel it is important to view to really understand what Glenn Beck, his guests, and myself are trying to get at.

0:32 well how can you opt out? Every piece of paperwork you submit or fill out to enroll in school is scrutinized. A child's birth date and place, parents names, occupation, address, yearly earnings, languages spoken, level of education, social security numbers, government assistance enrollment, health and immunization records are all collected. Soon, they will be disseminated. You cannot enroll a child without such information. You must obey.

2:02 Heard that? Information at the student level will not be shared except...well...actually it will be, but shh! Don't tell!

2:25  yes FERPA has been altered (glad I'm not the only one to know) http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/pdf/parentoverview.pdf and http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-12-02/pdf/2011-30683.pdf can send you, the reader on a little quest to find how FERPA...our PRIVACY has been changed. And parental consent is no longer required to collect data. So a school, testing agency, or other "official" can ask your child anything they want without your knowledge. Teach your children to not talk to strangers or...really anyone it seems. Trust no one.

2:48 the 400 data points are mentioned above in my link right after the video.

4:12 Dd you get that? The "evil progressives" or "republican neocons" aren't behind this alone....all sides are rallying for CCS and control, Obama, Bush, everyone.


Part III

0:50 Part of me is all for new math methods as I am quite terrible with math. However, I look at the tens grouping shown a few times and it looks like more work and more room for error. It might work in simpler math, maybe, but more complex math? No. A few seconds past 0:50 Beck agrees, yes, this cannot be applicable to higher level math. But then again, my conspiracy nut side says, "they" don't want us to think at a higher level.

2:03 Yes...when why ends, so does learning and knowledge. But if I ask, why does a car move? And I go and pick it apart with no prior knowledge, I likely won't know what I am doing or learning, or be able to explain myself. If I get a basic knowledge, the dull rote learning that does build a foundation (but is NOT the end all to learning) I could apply that knowledge to an unknown (the car) effectively.

2:42 Wait a right answer doesn't matter? So to go back to my car analogy, I can fiddle with the car and try and put it back together. Sure, it can no longer steer and explodes when I try and drive it; killing my proverbial self and another vehicle I careen into, but what matters is I "learned" a process. I didn't get it right but who cares?  And isn't this "right isn't right" notion further dumbing down our children? They will suddenly have no clue how to even multiply in high school, and will be sent into the workforce, asking for a white board to draw Xs and ten-groups when the cash register goes out. And when they give incorrect change, they will pat themselves on the back, "I tried, and did a process. Gold stars for me! Good job! It does not matter if you got correct change." Wow. Just...wow.

My real question is, must it be "only the answer" or "only the process"? Why can't we teach both? Well, having a bunch of people, feeling good about themselves and mastering a process (but not getting the right answer) keeps the masses happy but underpowered, as knowledge is power. Having a bunch of automatons spitting out answers (and correct ones) with no clue of how or why means the masses Will never rise up, question, or challenge anything.

4:42 Human Capital should scare everyone. We are now just products. Also mentioned was the embracing of the "beautiful but bland" standards. The district where I work has adopted CCS early and my department has become the guinea pigs. I'm basically just teaching to the "old" standards (although I don't favor them much) because I don't have any information. No evidence of effectiveness, no aligned curriculum, the state tests are yet to assess CCS....but yet we have adopted them.

5:38 CCS...our students, our future, bought and sold. Dangle the money carrot and people will do anything to follow you and your propaganda. Therefore, to fight CCS you must fight the feds, state, district, PTA, NEA, chamber of commerce, Gates Foundation...the whole world is against you. So the government and big business will tell your child what and how to learn.


I want to thank Truth in American Education (also on facebook), Glenn Beck, and his guests for opening my eyes and yours.

the psychos of the tenured teacher rank

First a disclaimer, there are plenty of good tenured teachers. In fact, the majority are good, but a few rotten eggs ruin the bunch, and unlike other careers in which one serves the needs of the people, in teaching these rotten eggs are just shuffled around, kept.

Below is what I am 99% sure is a true story, told to me by a few reputable people on seperate occasions.

A teacher, Mrs. X worked in a cerrtain district at a certain high school last year. She was tenured and did something unspeakable. She threatened a student, saying she would bring a gun to school and blow his brains out. Police investigated and found an unregistered gun in her home and removed it.

Mrs. X was then transferred to another high school in the district where she still works to this very day, teaching our youth. Because she is tenured. Because the threat cannot become reality because I suspect that, well, she is at a different school, removed from her victim, and now has had her gun taien from her. You know, so, everyone is safe. She is now medicated so all is well.

I do not feel at ease, that she is in the classroom.

A moment of fear

This week started out a orml week in the trenches of the classroom, and then.... The overcom announces, "lock down. Immediately". I freeze in my tracks and think, this was not in the agenda, no word was said, this must be REAL. I have 38 students, myself, my unborn child to protect. And we're just sitting ducks in a "shoot here, crazies, please" unprotected location. I ensure the door is locked and a student shuts off the lights. I look at the door, with a tall window next to it, facing the hallway. A bullet could easily break the glass and hit a student. The glass could shatter and if the murderer is somewhat slim, they could walk right on in and kill us all. I look to the opposite wall, a wall entirely of windows facing the outside, the school entrance. Again, a bullet could pierce these windows. An entire wall as a vantage point for who to murder. Sure. We scoot to the front, perdendicular to the window-wall, hunker down, and stay silent. You know, so the killer doesn't know we're here. It will all be okay. Except....if someone is entering the school grounds during school hours, seeing cars and busses and a domino effect of lights switching off, I think they can figure out, hmm, there are children inside. Even a dumb murderer, after a casual glance in the window (missing the dark huddled masses) would eventually think, hmm it's a school day, the kids are here.

Or the murderer could think, hmm, let's just shoot through the long window and walk on into the classroom and massacre everyone. Let's angle the gun through the window wall and empty a spray of gunfire towards the floor, there are people there. Simple geometry dictates that merely pulling the blinds on the windows and hunkering down, you are still a target. Just like in pool, any part of the pool table is reachable with simple geometry. Same goes for a classroom.

So I stood there, ushering my students towards one side of the room, thinking, where do I hide? From the left, we're all targets and from the right, shoot, climb in, we're dead. There is no where to run or hide. It can take the police five, ten, fiftenn minutes to get here. Add the fact there are probably 60 classrooms, and the murderer, the survivors, the deceased, could be anywhere. It could take the police minutes to stop the violence once on campus, as they have to find the violence.

It reminds me of the duck and cover nuclear bomb drills. Like ducking and covering will save you from radiation and the incinerating blast. Like crouching against a wall, in a gun-free unrpotected zone, with huge picture windows, will protect you from death in a mass shooting.

It's all to make people feel secure, but it is anything but security. As I froze in fear, I thought, who will die? Will it be a classrooom down the hall, or will it be mine? Who will be targeted? Will I survive? Why can't I protect my 38 students, self, and unprotected baby? Why must I come here and have such thoughts and legitimate fears?

It was a drill. An unanounced cruel joke of sorts, where I sat in prayer, asking for life, thinking God it happened. My fears came true. I didn't deserve this. Our students don't deserve this. Removing guns or making gun free zones will not stop the violence of sick individuals. Protection, real, not "oh duck down kiddos" will be our saving grace.

Protecting Valuables

I could go on and on about gun control, the Sandy Hook massacre, etc. But I won't. All I will say is this: Why are our children, our most valuable things, NOT protected? After the massacre, guess what? Schools are NO MORE secure or protected. That is, unless you go to the same school as the President's children, which has 11 armed guards and did before his children were there. You know, we can protect the top 1% elite. Schools have had, and have, in place a "lockdown" system for a gunman on campus. Get inside the classroom, lock your doors, hunker down. About as effective as hiding under your desks in a nuclear disaster drill. Sure, having armed guards at schools makes them prison-like. Newsflash, they are already prison-like. Would I feel more secure if the school I worked at was secure, with armed guards or teachers or janitors or whatever? Yes yes and more yes. Anyone who decides not to go in the front door can go in a side door, knocking until someone lets them in. And if they are armed, I don't think anyone is going to ask for their student id. If the crazy person walks into the main office and just rids of the secretary, they have free reign of the school. Sure, society is ill and we have crazies and bla bla bla. I completely agree, but you cannot change society overnight. With a prevalent rap and gang culture, no rights of passage, broken homes, lack of morals, etc etc....we aren't going to have a utopia any time soon. When education, family values, and being a decent human being are "uncool", it doesn't help. Besides, you never can have a utopian society. Sure we can help the entally ill much better than we have. We can do many things to lesson a propensity for violence, but we can never eradicate it. And lessening it takes years. Decades. Centureis. Protecting our children takes seconds. Let's protect them, and work on bettering society.

Failing Students and Giving Them High Self Esteem. And More.

There is a school, remaining anonymous. An inner-city school, with a high percentage of minority, English-learner, and poverty-stricken children. But many pass their classes and get a rather high GPA. Adn they feel competent, proud, informed. But they are being handicapped, abused, lied to. How? Well, first, a bit of a tangent diverging yet connecting to the topic at hand. Grading. Grading is often claimed to be subjective, one person's A is another's C. Thati s part of what was the drive for NCLB, accountability, standards, and the test-till-death culture. To prove how a child is doing and what they know. But of course, grades still exiist within this NCLB culture. Students still get an A, B, C... and now supposedly an A really means whatever an A means, in all grades and states. Thrre is the argument to leiminate grading and just do rubrics or evaluations, or just do assessments and standardized testing. There is an argument that standard grading is wrong. I won't go into each in depth but most of us think of a grading scale and grades as something similar to this: A- 90-100% correct B- 80-89% correct C- 70-79% correct D- 60-69% correct F- anything below 60%, failing. Some schools and colleges go as far as to null and void Ds- Ds are essentially failing grades. However, to connect back in, this certain school and probably others, have developed grading scale based on standardized testing. Some more charts here to explain. When your chil takes their NCLB exams, they get a "grade", being one of these... Advanced Proficient Basic Below Basic Far Below Basic One thinks of these in their mind, often, as A,B,C,D,f. Add in some tricky statistics and psychometrics and bla bla bla, a Proficient score on one exam does not always equal proficient on the next. Meaning if a child gets 83% correct on two exams, they might get a "proficient" grade on one, "advanced" on the the other. But to simplify and shave off some points, rounding and the like, you can get a ballpark figure of scores that well ahem can vary widely but is nice to at least look at and consider. Advanced= 80-100% Proficient=60-79.99% Basic= 40%-59.99% Below Basic= 20%-39.99% Far Below Basic= 0-19.99% correct Remember these figures are approximat and vary. By a lot. A statistical snafu of variance. But let's just go with what we have here. So with NCLB the goal is for 100% of children to be proficient or above in all subjects. 60% or above. That sounds like, "heck we expect all kids to get 60% or above? Geez, how easy!" but again add in psychometrics and trick questions, weighted items, incorrect items that don't get thrown out, bla bla bla, and the high stakes environment of a test, and the fact tests only test a certain way of thinkign and certain bits of information...and 60 is....not bad. Ok. So I keep diverging from my original point. At this school, their grades are.... A= 80-100% B= 60-79.99% C- 40-59.99% D= 20-39.99% F= 0-19.99% So, this school is sending D- students into the workforce, military, college, world. And it isn't like only 3% are D students. In some courses, D students are the majority. And add in a 3.0 student, "honor roll", "accceptable GPA for college" is something like a proficiency of maybe 55%. Not a "3,0" I am used to, hovering around 80%, a B. These students go into the world thinking, hey, I'm smart! I passed high school! I mean, with all Ds but it is passing. I passed! I'm ready for the world! But does the world consider 20% "passing"? If a doctor only does 20% of his work, what will happen? A oonstructino worker? Marine? Bus driver? Waitress? What will happen? THey will not "pass" and be sorely mistaken that they are competent. The world does not accept a 20% job. Yet since they "passed" high school, they have a complex...they have a diploma, they passed high school, they are skilled, competent, intelligent, ready for the world! To add to the problem, only assessments are graded. And, only certain assessments, so maybe 5 things a semsester per clss. So thy can slack off for an entire month, then pass a test at 20%, and slack off again, doing absolutely NOTHING, guess on a test, get 20%...and yep, pass the class. Giving less htat 20% effort and when "performing" doing only 20% and they pass. That means the waitress or doctor or construction worker etc would just sit and surf facebook for 40 hours a week, for four weeks, until they were told they were being evaluated, the big boss is coming in, etc. Then they'd swtich to "work mode" and serve 20% of the customers, operate on 20% of patients, or build all the buildings that day but really only do 20%...nailing only some nails in. Disaster. And, yes there's one more and, they can pass the class with an A or B if they get proficent or above on their NCLB exam. The students twst in a classroom with a teacher that does not teach their grade a teacher that barely knows them. They can easily cheat via their phones or the old fashioned lookie-lou and it likely will get passed by. So if half the class cheats off the smart kid, half the class passes. Even if thye didn't take a sinle prior exam or do a single bit of work. And guess what? This school is NOT alone. It remains anonymous but I alone know of TWO schools in sepearate districts that follow this entire bizarre grading and testing system. Anyone else find this to be maddening, discriminating, unfair, wrong? P.S. please excuse any typos, my laptop is on its last leg and word/typing programs do not work, and blogger is in survival mode without any buttons, functions, spell check, etc. Just thought I'd explain myself.

me likey

http://demandeducation.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/ive-been-called-a-scab/

Perhaps I am a scab
I am not 100% anti union. I think union power and will is skewed, but we do need protection from abuses.
I am a child advocate and believe the needs of the child come FIRST. ALWAYS.
And I happen to be unemployed and looking for work anywhere in the nation; among thousands and thousands of credentialed, jobless teachers.
Oh, and I believe in the free market.
So….
CPS, Chicago Public Schools, strikes. They do not want to be treated similar to charter school teachers, pre-tenure teachers, or any non-union person in the world outside of education. They also want fewer children per class and more funding and support, which I am not against, but striking, when there is no money to find anything, is not the answer. Revolutionizing the system is.
But anyways.
I am a scab. Such an ugly, vile, negatively connotative word, right?
I am a scab because I, if I could, would cross the picket lines in Chicago. Sure, I would be photographed and slandered and denied a job anywhere in the free world (ahh such diplomacy they have… lovely scare tactics, how adult) and if I made a buck or two, great! I need a job and some experience to fill my jobless gap, so, voila, free market….there are teachers needing jobs, here’s some jobs.
I am a scab because, if I could, I would be in Chicago in a hot second to open a school door and put a sign out, ”Hey kids, are you missing your English lessons, and think you deserve a free, fair, decent education, being that it is a right and all? C’mon in.” I mean, I’m fully qualified in my state (and have looked at IL certification…aside from living in Chi-town proper, if I filed the paperwork, I’d be qualified). And guess what? I believe every child can learn beyond his/her own expectations or others, and should be given the best education out there. With a graduation rate hovering around 50%, and college ready kids hovering below 10, these kids need an education. And not just sometimes.
Just like in Detroit when a few kids walked out, sick and tired of a subpar education, demanding more. Heck I’d have been there, too.
So I am a scab.
But you know what? Scabs aren’t just “killing teacher solidarity” or “not giving a s%^t about students and teachers” or “willing to hair-flip and turn on co-workers” or even “the incrustation that forms over a sore or wound during healing”
No. A scab also helps heal, stop bloodshed, attack and kill harmful germs, and protect the wound.
I am a scab. Yes I want to heal the broken education system, stop the bloodshed by giving children the education that they are watching rush away from them, show them teachers do care about them by stopping the proverbial bloodshed, I want to attack the notion of teachers not caring, and kill the lack of education going on. I want to protect our children from poverty, dropping out, etc by giving them the education they darn well deserve, need, and want. So yeah. I’m a scab I guess.

Prisonview Elementary

I interviewed for an administrative position at school X, we'll call it.
I did not get the job after a 5 hour interview including an 8 pages of typing for an in depth analysis/case study thing.

But that is ok. School X should be shut down. I want to expose them for what they do to children.

X is an elementary charter school in Illinois.

X does not have recess. No play time, free time, social time, zone out time, break time. At all. Even in kindergarten.

X does have lunch so I guess that is a "break"? It is either 20 or 30 minutes. They get assigned seats in the cafeteria and sit with their class...so if a 5th grader in Mrs. Teacher's class has a friend in Mr. Teacher's 5th grade class, they won't eat together. Kids just sit and eat and sit and go back to class.

X has P.E./Health but it isn't daily.

X is technology centered. For 1985. They have one computer lab, used once a week per class, for test prep. Joy.

X has students attend from 8-3, but you're supposed to arrive by 730 and stay till 5 for enrichment courses.

X serves a high poverty high minority population


X is "rigorous" and "academics focused" and "college bound, even in kindergarten, we expect every child to attend college"

X has "no mobility, students attend here till they have to go on to public middle school. None leave, they love it here". The official state data website has a different statistic- mobility of 82%, meaning 82% that started, didn't finish there. But the school does not allow new students after October so....yeah...

X does not reward good behavior cause it should be intrinsic. Sure, I agree, but sometimes it helps. If giving Billy a sticker for not cursing the teacher out, so be it, it is in the best interest for the students and staff.

X does not have art or music. Not even the Macaroni Lincoln Art we all did in school, cause it isn't "academic". No "Holiday musical" or anything. And no classroom parties, no birthday celebrations or even last day of school field day.

X has uniforms...ok I am not against that but they even get into sock color and length and stuff.


I have named School X, Prison View Elementary. Cause it sounds like prison.