Tag Archives: Common Core State Standards Initiative

“Smart Options” & the Revolving Door of Common Core

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Remember The Great Recession? Did you know that, while Main Street was struggling to stay financially alive, there was a group meeting to determine the “smart options” for our schools? These people were smart all right…in looking out for their own self-interests.

Relatively few people knew about this meeting. So it’s understandable that most people did not see Common Core as the weapon of mass destruction that it is. In pursuit of the truth, please read on.

The following is a revised and updated version of a 2014 DailyKOS post. The original details more of the people involved in the plot to take advantage of a hurting nation. …  This is where the Smart Options saga began. … D.C.

How smart people kicked public schools when they were down.

Washington D.C. is known for its revolving door of political influence. Behind-closed-doors deals are the norm. That made it the perfect place for this group to hatch a blueprint for spending our American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) education dollars.

But when this meeting took place in April of 2009, few people were talking about how a common core of standards could be used against public school children. After all, WE were in The Great Recession. And THEY were not feeling our pain.

The fact is that education “reformers,” philanthropic organizations, venture capitalists, and politicians followed the dogma expressed by then Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.”… They didn’t.

And their plan was written up as Smart Options: Investing the Recovery Funds for Student Success. The Bill & Melinda Gates and Eli & Edythe Broad Foundations sponsored the publication (among other things). The Gates influence over education policy is well-known while Eli Broad probably requires a bit of introduction for many.

Eli Broad made his billions mainly through real estate dealings and SunAmerica, which was sold and re-branded as AIG (yes, the same AIG that was too big to fail).

The Broad Foundation focuses on governance of schools, management training of leaders, and hands out generous “prizes” to charter management organizations.

Opportunity knocked; the Smart Options group answered.

Open the door on this one meeting and you will see how the country was purposely duped into financially supporting the education and technology INDUSTRIES ahead of schools.

Entered —the Core support team — the Coalition for Student Achievement, Aka College and Career-Ready America.

These Smart Options participants set the spending priorities and claimed that if states focused on their collection of “big ideas” the country would see “real educational results” by 2012.

Priority #1 “A common core of fewer, clearer, higher, evidence-based, college-and career-ready standards adopted by at least 40 states…”

Priority #2 “More robust and user-friendly data and information systems.”

Priority #3  “A meaningful professional teacher evaluation system in every state and school district.”

Priority #4 “By 2012, states and districts should have shut down at least 500 of these [low-performing] schools and replaced them with new, higher-performing schools…including charter schools.” — That is a quote.

Priority #5 “Targeted interventions provided to the students who are at least two years behind academically in reading, writing, and mathematics.”

Priority #1 became Common Core Standards even though the claims of being “evidence-based” were never substantiated. Priorities 2,3, and 4 caused chaos.

It wasn’t just one district that used Recovery funds “inappropriately.” The scenario across the country was money spent on standards, testing, and technology. The statement above is from the largest district in Eli Broad’s backyard, LA. Source: Recovery Act & Chaos.

What about the last priority, helping students?

Usually the devil is in the details. But with this, the specifics were few and the Recovery dollars didn’t materialize into the promised “results.” But, despite Bill Gate’s claim that Common Core failed, it didn’t. The core federal plan did work.

Instead of fully stabilizing funding for schools, the “smart option” became a “race to the top.” The collection of data and establishment of state longitudinal data systems became the core priority. And the core system is close to completion. … How?…

Look at who was at this table set for 40.

The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation had three foundation employees there. Additionally, there were seven other people who were either graduates of the Broad leadership training, or had a role in governing the Broad training center.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had four representatives directly from their parent organization. But seated at this table, just about everyone else had connections with Gates. Plus, among those many Gates’ associates were three groups essential to launching the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI, as Common Core was originally called):

P-20W is Preschool through Workforce.

Data Quality Campaign: They proudly state, “In 2009, 8 states used state funds to support their P–20W data systems. In 2013, despite difficult economic times, 41 states committed state funds to ensure the long-term sustainability.”

Council of the Great City Schools: With outreach to 67 of the largest urban districts, they had  received a Gates grant to assist in implementing Common Core.

Student Achievement Partners (Aka Achieve the Core): The lead writers of the Common Core Standards, David Coleman, Susan Pimentel, and Jason Zimba, created this organization. David Coleman represented them at this meeting.

Common Core was central to the plot but a distraction from the bigger issue.

Now, the essential and basic question in need of answering is, after seeing how these people met and planned….

…is this how we should govern the education of America’s children?

Let’s look closer at THEIR process for transforming OUR schools. Here are some of the other smart people AT THE TABLE.

KSA–Plus Communications, Inc. was present for their expertise in providing “education communications and strategic consulting to set education agendas in motion.”

McKinsey & Co. provides services including data analysis and transformation — boasting about having the ability to “drive adoption throughout the organization.”

Last but not least in the area of transformation was Alvarez & Marsal. They are known for “restructuring” and “turnaround” for companies including Enron and the failed Lehman Brothers. “Mavericks” on the ready “when conventional approaches are not enough to activate change,” they promise to “accelerate results through decisive action.”

But for these smart, self-interested dictators of reform to succeed, they needed to dictate education policy. — They needed to direct our public dollars by directing our laws.

So also in attendance was a representative from Education Counsel LLC with their “track record of forging the kind of partnerships needed to bring about meaningful and systemic change.”

In addition, there were two representatives from Education Sector (Aka American Institutes for Research – AIR), a D.C. non-profit education policy think tank. And as they state on their website;

“The reauthorization of ESEA (No Child Left Behind) is the nexus of all of our K-12 work, including testing, accountability, teacher quality, finance, data, and school choice.”

COMMON CORE STANDARDS provide COMMON DATA. They were never JUST standards. The Core was always about their SYSTEM.

And No Child Left Behind became the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) as planned EXCEPT the name was supposed to be the Every Child Ready for College or Career Act.

Words have been changed but the core principles remain deeply embedded in FEDERAL law. Yet, the selling point for ESSA was the false claim of a return to state and local control. Or by the term “state” did Congress mean the Special Interest State?

Who governs our schools?

Did this system of exchange of COMMON student data evolve “IN A CLIMATE OF TRUST”? For “MUTUAL BENEFITS”?

Are we ready to put our trust in philanthropic venture capitalists to train our teachers, our leaders, and educate our children? Is the public even aware that the private education industry is already doing all these things? And do people know the extent to which children’s data is being gathered and tracked? Do you know why?

The system our Recovery Act dollars helped build is called a “human capital development data system.”

Now, do we close the door on what we have allowed to transpire and let the Smart Options dictators proceed with their plan?

Do we turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to OUR public education system and let it become a casualty of the Special Interest State? Do we let it become their human capital development system?

Do we really think this is our smartest option?

How Common Standards & Data Collection Became Our Common Problem

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Our common problem with test-based reforms began long ago.

Sold on the idea that common standards will benefit the nation economically, the public — not most teachers, not most parents — the public assisted in the adoption of Common Core National Standards. Together, we created a common problem.

Does the public know who owns them? Do we understand how much data is collected, where that data goes, and what it is and will be used for? And, is it vulnerable to abuse and misuse?

Please look closely at the who, what, and why of Common Core. The safety of children’s data demands we get answers. The answers —the truth— are why The Common Core “State” Initiative must be dismantled.

Who was at the Common Core development table?

On the official Common Core development team, there were numerous people associated with corporate information systems specialists. Information systems companies that already manage our national energy and defense information, data collection, and data mining were represented. That should give us pause.

Does the public approve of private industry holding student information AND being such an integral part of developing “THE” standards upon which the WHOLE public education system will function?

What are the plans for student and teacher data?

Many of the people at the Common Core table also sat on board of directors for Morgan Stanley, Smith Barney, Lehman Brothers, and were associated with Goldman Sachs Foundation. Remember the “too-big-to-fail” financiers? Recall – THEY DID FAIL!

Their failures wreaked havoc on our economy. Then, they ended up sitting on the Core standards development team along with testing, tech, and curriculum development specialists. And we trust them with our children’s data?

The data will be swapped just like real estate. It will be bundled and packaged. It will be traded and sold. It will be used to develop new education fads and products. Sales will line the pockets of those in the industries of testing, technology, and curriculum materials (yup, same industries that pushed “higher, common” standards). We know this is true because it is happening.

In the end, our public education system is to be but a cog in the business of “human capital development.”

That’s their terminology. Students are being seen as products. And teachers will be evaluated and sorted just like the students — based on data.

How much of this data is really necessary for use in our schools? Thus far, no one is demanding an answer. So the threat of standardization through the Common Core assessments and common data collection system has been allowed to become a common problem.

Despite objections and protests, why has Common Core (under a variety of names) continued to direct the education of our nation’s children?

We know why it was pushed; the pushers made money. And there is no doubt; the data being collected is to facilitate a complete P-20W (early learning through postsecondary workforce) system. Common Core is the heart of that system.

Why did we comply?

Beginning with the 1994 Clinton reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), “challenging” content standards and testing were federalized —cemented into federal law. Standards and assessments became the education (pretense of) reform rule of the land without question and, to date, without open debate of the truth. Then the 2001 Bush ESEA reauthorization, No Child Left Behind, took the concept further by federalizing national test-based accountability.

The sell job of test-based accountability was in the wording. Want “better student outcomes,” “higher achievement,” to “leave no child behind”? PLUS, you like the idea of “accountability, flexibility, and choice”? …Yes, yes, yes, and yes…. Thus, the public was duped. The nation’s schools complied.

Enter the Common Core “State” Initiative.

Billed as “new” and “unique,” the Core is neither. Promising to bring “success” and make students “college and career ready,” there has never been any proof of that. The truth is that standards alone —“just standards” — don’t improve student achievement. Learning is a much more complex process.

What the Core is certain to do is sell new curriculum materials, new tests, and new remedial materials and programs when students “fail” the tests… The pattern of deception continues.

And the Obama ESEA reauthorization (ESSA – Every Student Succeeds Act) has given the Secretary of Education a new federal tool — the ESSA State Plans approval process — to further our national movement towards The Common Core Workforce Development System.

PURPOSE OF PEER REVIEW.—The peer-review process shall be designed to—

‘‘(ii) promote effective implementation of the challenging State academic standards through State and local innovation…(page 22, PLAW-114publ95 – ESSA)

“Challenging State academic standards” is the tagline for Common Core as is the terminology “college or career ready.” It’s nothing new. Some congressional representatives have been pushing this for decades — ask Senator Alexander et. al.

The Common Core backlash took the developers by surprise so they had to change the name of this 2013 bill to pass it through in 2015 as ESSA.

This is the 2013 bill. Their plan never changed – just the title of the law and some words.

 

The hope now is that the public will see that at the core of this issue is not our agreed need for some commonality of knowledge; at The Core is conformity to a totalitarian workforce development system.

So how do we stop what has thus far appeared to be unstoppable? 

We must challenge the authorities that put “challenging State standards” into federal law where it does not belong.

On the federal level, the challenge begins with the demand to stop implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

At your state level, that challenge begins with the demand to see what proof authorities have that the last 30 years of setting “higher standards” and using test-based accountability systems improved schools. Show us the proof.

In your schools, demand to know what data is being collected, where that data is going, what contracts with providers have been signed, and what steps you can take to refuse or opt your child out of testing.

Corporate interests pushed the federal overreach of our laws in order to profit from public education, not to benefit public school children. Their control of our laws is our common problem.

Foreign Influence & America’s Choice

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Wow! It took this crap-fest of a presidential election to get the issue of foreign influence to the national stage. But seriously, we actually do need to talk about foreign influence in the inner workings of our government —in the making of our laws.

Sure, we should be appalled by foreign governments trying to influence our elections but foreign influence in our government is nothing new; it’s business as usual in the cesspool of Congress. 878492

Oh, and I might as well be upfront with you. This blog isn’t about the presidential election. This is about BIG money in politics. This is about foreign interference in our lives on a regular basis.

So please, hang with me on this little, but disgusting, story. You need to know how multinational corporations stealthily exert foreign influence on Congress and pilfer our coffers. And even worse, the villains in this story are quietly working to privatize a whole public system and create a global monopoly on education. (Hidden Privatisation) TRUE STORY!

The story begins with the British-owned company Pearson Education Corporation. They aren’t the dreaded Russians but they are a foreign influence none-the-less.

Pearson provides publishing and assessment services to corporations and schools from Pre-K to higher education and …. professional learning (oh, that’s a story for another day!).

Do they influence our public policies through lobbyists? Yes, openly.

Sandy Kress, the controversial testing lobbyist, was the architect of No Child Left Behind who then lobbied for Pearson Education while simultaneously serving on several state advisory boards. Kress became so unpopular amid an anti-testing rebellion in Texas that the legislature made it illegal for him or any other testing lobbyist to make campaign contributions. Even registered sex offenders can give politicians money in Texas.

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Provided by Open Secrets

Pearson’s lobbying of Congress increased just after the writing of No Child Left Behind in 2001 and Common Core in 2008. Remember, this is foreign influence over dollars spent. They secure the law then secure the spending.

It’s legal. But it’s not right.

And it’s the stealthy part of this story that should really alarm us —the think tanks.

Think tanks influence the actual writing of the laws. Foreign powers do buy influence through them. Their goals become the aim of our laws. Terminology is of their choosing. Their influence fixes a law in place. That’s how the development of “an industrial complex” works — by influencing “public” policy. (“Public” in the sense that the public follows the law.)

And unbeknownst to most of the public, it can be foreign agents creating the loopholes that keep us running in circles unable to ever catch up to the truth in time. The money’s pocketed before we know it.

But, let’s get back to the story. We know this…

Pearson announced “in the summer of 2000 to spend $2.5 billion on an American testing company.” (Some thought it wasn’t a great investment. Ha!)

…“the next year, Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act, which mandated millions of new standardized tests for millions of kids in public schools.”

Pearson just happened to be “in a prime position to capitalize.”

And we know…

School testing corporations have spent at least $20 million on lobbying along with wining and dining or even hiring policymakers in pursuit of big revenues from federal and state testing mandates under “No Child Left Behind” measures and the Common Core curriculum, according to a new analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

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Yup. Lawmakers created a no profit left behind free-for-all targeting public school children.

Now, this is the point in this little story where the connection of Pearson to Marc Tucker—the unofficial consultant for our fundamental change to a standards-based (test-based) system under No Child Left Behind —was still only speculation in my mind….until I found the following fact.

On Sept. 10, 2001, President George W. Bush was at Jacksonville, Florida’s Justina Road Elementary School “to tout his $900 million education agenda.” He…

“chose Justina because test scores at the Duval County school have steadily increased in the past few years, thanks to a new program that emphasizes literacy skills.

That program – America’s Choice.”

ALWAYS, the plan was sold using this promise…

“Every student should leave high school capable of doing college-level work without remediation.”

These same words were in my states’ mission for “our” standards-based accountability system in 1999 and the words were reused again to sell Common Core. Is No Child Left Behind connected to Common Core in the minds of most Americans?

Is the choice of words, a coincidence? No. The connection is America’s Choice.

Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) first partnered with America’s Choice in May 2009. Financed with more than $3 million in federal Title I funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, America’s Choice is working with the district to implement the Rigor and Readiness Initiative into 19 middle and high schools. The initiative, which America’s Choice developed with ACT Inc., the company that creates the college preparation test, includes the Ramp-Up and Navigator curricula.

The Common Core State Standards Initiative was also funded with money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The think tanks and other “education organizations” got together. And the same people continue to profit from selling us the same product (the standards & testing-based theory)— repackaged.

Funded with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars!?!!!?!! In the Great Recession our Recovery Act dollars fed the multinational education industry…. foreign companies instead of our children. Wall Street at the expense of Main Street! Wasn’t that the outcry?

At this point, we do need a good laugh.

At this point, we do need a good laugh.

So who founded America’s Choice? Marc Tucker. What think tank does he run? National Center for Education and the Economy (NCEE). How influential is he? Way, way too influential.

When it comes to education law, if parents and teachers were half as influential as this one man, we might actually get to the promised land — equal educational opportunity.

Ah, but the rest of the story —the Coup de grace $$$$$$$$$$

America’s Choice…

“began as a program of the National Center on Education and Economy (NCEE) in 1998 and became a private [for-profit] organization in 2004.”

…combined with Pearson…to seal the deal.

Pearson and America’s Choice Announce Acquisition Agreement

August 3, 2010 —Pearson…today signed a letter of agreement to acquire America’s Choice…Pearson’s extraordinary resources and technological expertise will facilitate the adaptation and reach of America’s Choice’s comprehensive and proven school improvement model to a global community of educators and students.

What do you think America? What’s America’s choice?

America’s choice isn’t high skills or low wages like Mr. Tucker says in his propaganda.

America currently has no choice. We are at war; it’s money-driven law versus people-driven policies.

1003583You think that when domestic influences (think-tanks) team up with foreign-born companies, they are unstoppable? Absolutely not.

But we have to face the facts.

Both political parties are corrupted to the core. And every person voting to return their boy or girl to congress is voting for more of the same. You want change. Change Congress.

You want revolution. Start with a peaceful tactic — revolt at the voting booth. Be the anti-incumbent vote. Then rise to the challenge of beating back the testing machine in your own schools.

Such a deplorable, revolting situation as allowing foreign corporate-created laws to control the education of U.S. children is intolerable. It ends with us.