Weekend News: Your Anti CCSS Back To School Wish

Warriors, have no fear, I’ve not converted to the supportive side for “Common Core”. I’m still VERY MUCH opposed. However, as we all know, it is the time of year our schools are gearing up for “Back to School”. For many of us, that means MORE CCSS. During this past week, I shared with you how the Bic Ink Pens Company is hosting a BTS (Back to School) Contest full of ‘Common Core English Language Arts’ lessons. What else is lurking out there? Plenty! This weekend’s news feature is the CCSS laden “Parent Toolkit”.

“Education Nation”:

Using Twitter as a tool for building support for Back to School, this NBC News project (NBC is part of the CCSS Machine), has a current campaign called “#SchoolYrResolution”. Who’s contributing? Everyday parents like you and I; Pearson Publishing; The American Heart Association; Education Nation and NBC personalities; Parent Toolbox (another NBC Education Nation project); doctors; and, school districts. While most everyone’s contributions are varied, it is the Pearson Publishing contributions that are the most pointed…toward MORE parent involvement. If you’re not familiar with the ideas Pearson has about more parent involvement (a nice way to phrase their real meaning of ‘compliance’), I urge you to find out for yourselves. As far as “Education Nation’s Parent Toolbox” goes, it’s slam full of pro CCSS social-emotional mind bending.

 

The Mind Bending:

By simply searching the PT (Parent Toolkit) with the phrase “Common Core”, I got back the following results: Academics, 12 articles;  Health and Wellness, 19 articles; Social and Emotional, 8 articles; lastly, the latest news on CCSS, 48 articles.
Titles among the latest news include how grit and persevering CAN be taught and then there’s one detailing their version of STEM (as you know, I’ve shared a true version of STEM with you many times). Repeated in several different articles: sex, bullying, on-line behavior, money management, and lots more. Under social/emotional, you’ll see empathy, diversity, and how to collaborate. As far as the experts putting all this information together for you, the parent, there are several of them. You’ll see their names and smiling faces, but to learn more about them, you need to click on each of them. I would encourage you to look into them. Most folks, will do what we’ve seen before: add the ‘expert’ title to a face featured on a famous website and leave it at that. That’s what the CCSS Machine is banking on..that we WON’T investigate those experts they use. But, oh, how we’ve proved them wrong.

 

The Other Supportive CCSS Machine Members of Parent Toolkit:

Curious about how many of the experts were dyed in the wool CCSS supporters, I searched for information. Not getting the results I bargained for, however, did lead me to the ‘other’ pro CCSS groups involved in ‘Parent Toolkit’ and as such, part of the efforts to sway parents toward the CCSS Machine.

Hunt Institute is a well known part of the CCSS Machine (if you don’t know how, please find my fellow anti CCSS Warrior, LadyLiberty1885’s blog and search for “Hunt Institute”)
NEA, Khan Academy, Council of Great City Schools, Sesame Street, the National PTA, SAT, and many others. See: http://www.parenttoolkit.com/?objectid=E0F96EB0-20A6-11E3-8EC10050569A5318

What We Can Do:

Share this news with other parents, first of all!
Second, why not visit the Twitter page for the School Year Resolution and make a few anti CCSS truths available.
Look into the Parent Toolkit’s experts, philosophies, and use these are guidelines for interviewing those school officials who will be leading your students this year. Are they of the same mindset? If so, use your true knowledge of social emotional damage CCSS causes! Remember, most pro CCSS folks have no evidence to support its worth, yet we have evidence to support its harm! Use it!!

NBC’s tie to CCSS:
The PolitiChicks‘ article: http://politichicks.com/2014/08/gates-funds-commoncore-coverage/

Khan Academy’s CCSS page:
https://www.khanacademy.org/commoncore

National PTA: The group has several pro CCSS position papers, look in the “Position Papers” tab.
http://www.pta.org/content.cfm?ItemNumber=3444

NEA: They were invited into the CCSS Machine’s fold by the CCSSO (Council of Chief State School Officers AND the NGA (National Governors Association). The two groups who OWN the CCSS copyright!
http://www.nea.org/home/46665.htm

Hunt Institute: This organization has partnered with both the National PTA and the CCSSO to produce pro CCSS propaganda.
http://www.hunt-institute.org/resources/2014/06/pta-common-core-videos/
http://www.ccsso.org/resources/digital_resources/common_core_implementation_video_series.html

Closing:

So, my anti CCSS Warriors, what is your Back to School Wish? We know we want to be Common Core free. We still have time to influence our national level legislators as they are home on break right now. The Student Success Act and the Every Child Achieves Act are both being updated and enlarged. The bills are’omnibus’ bills. This is BAD. As we’ve seen with other mammoth bills, this means all kinds legislation unrelated to education will be thrown in! We know we desire a post secondary education free of the CCSS’s CTE (Career Technical Education), CP (Career Pathways), and the recently revealed CBPs (Competency Based Pathways). This means we must be on top of the re-authorization of the HEA, Higher Education Act.
Keep going, my friends, we’ve got lots to do.