Common Core Does Not Prepare Students for College, New Report Finds

A recently-released report confirms what Common Core critics have suspected all along: Common Core State Standards do not adequately prepare students for college-level work. The ACT report finds many concerning shortcomings in the Common Core State Standards, which have been adopted by most states. Notably, the report reveals:
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Fighting Islamicization and Antisemitism in America

A new form of antisemitism is taking place in America’s public schools via textbooks, activists say. They are spearheading a nationwide movement to thwart the Islamic indoctrination of America’s youth. Their efforts started in Williamson County, Tennessee when a concerned mother contacted Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN) founder and President Lori Cordoza-Moore in response to several troubling passages in her son’s textbook. Read more at Breitbart.com Read More......

Lynne Cheney Op-Ed: The End of History, Part II

AFP/Getty Images: President Reagan speaking near the
Brandenburg Gate in West Belin, June 12, 1987.

By Lynne V. Cheney
Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2015
The new Advanced Placement U.S. history exam focuses on oppression, group identity and Reagan the warmonger.

If you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

—Present Ronald Reagan, June 12, 1987

President Reagan’s challenge to Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev remains one of the most dramatic calls for freedom in our time. Thus I was heartened to find a passage from Reagan’s speech on the sample of the new Advanced Placement U.S. history exam that students will take for the first time in May. It seemed for a moment that students would be encouraged to learn about positive aspects of our past rather than be directed to focus on the negative, as happens all too often.

But when I looked closer to see the purpose for which the quotation was used, I found that it is held up as an example of “increased assertiveness and bellicosity” on the part of the U.S. in the 1980s. That’s the answer to a multiple-choice question about what Reagan’s speech reflects.

No notice is taken of the connection the president made between freedom and human flourishing, no attention to the fact that within 2½ years of the speech, people were chipping off pieces of the Berlin Wall as souvenirs. Instead of acknowledging important ideas and historical context, test makers have reduced President Reagan’s most eloquent moment to warmongering.

The AP U.S. history exam matters. Half a million of the nation’s best and brightest high-school students will take it this year, hoping to use it to earn college credit and to polish their applications to competitive colleges. To score well on the exam, students have to learn what the College Board, a private organization that creates the exam, wants them to know.

No one worried much about the College Board having this de facto power over curriculum until that organization released a detailed framework—for courses beginning last year—on which the Advanced Placement tests on U.S. history will be based from 2015 onward. When educators, academics and other concerned citizens realized how many notable figures were missing and how negative was the view of American history presented, they spoke out forcefully. The response of the College Board was to release the sample exam that features Ronald Reagan as a warmonger.

It doesn’t stop there. On the multiple-choice part of the sample exam, there are 18 sections, and eight of them take up the oppression of women, blacks and immigrants. Knowing about the experiences of these groups is important—but truth requires that accomplishment be recognized as well as oppression, and the exam doesn’t have questions on subjects such as the transforming leadership of Martin Luther King Jr.

The framework requires that all questions take up sweeping issues, such as “group identity,” which leaves little place for transcendent individuals. Men and women who were once studied as inspirational figures have become examples of trends, and usually not uplifting ones. The immigrant story that the exam tells is of oppressed people escaping to America only to find more oppression. That many came seeking the Promised Land—and found it here—is no longer part of the narrative.

Critics have noted that Benjamin Franklin is absent from the new AP U.S. history framework, and perhaps in response, the College Board put a quotation from Franklin atop the sample exam. Yet not one of the questions that were asked about the quotation has to do with Franklin. They are about George Whitefield, an evangelist whom Franklin described in the quote. This odd deflection makes sense in the new test, considering that Franklin was a self-made man, whose rise from rags to riches would have been possible only in America—an example of the exceptionalism that doesn’t fit the worldview that pervades the AP framework and sample exam.

Evangelist Whitefield, an Englishman who preached in the colonies, was a key figure in the Great Awakening, an evangelical revival that began in the 1730s. Here, however, he is held up as an example of “trans-Atlantic exchanges,” which seems completely out of left field until one realizes that the underlying notion is that we need to stop thinking nationally and think globally. Our history is simply part of a larger story.

Aside from a section about mobilizing women to serve in the workforce, the sample exam has nothing to say about World War II, the conflict in which the U.S. liberated millions of people and ended one of the most evil regimes in the history of the world. The heroic acts of the men who landed on Omaha Beach and lifted the flag on Iwo Jima are ignored. The wartime experiences that the new framework prefers are those raising “questions about American values,” such as “the internment of Japanese Americans, challenges to civil liberties, debates over race and segregation, and the decision to drop the atomic bomb.”

Why would the College Board respond to criticism by putting out a sample exam that proves the critics’ point? Perhaps it is a case of those on the left being so confirmed in their biases that they no longer notice them. Or maybe the College Board doesn’t care what others think.

Some states are trying to get its attention. The Texas State Board of Education, noting that the AP U.S. history framework is incompatible with that state’s standards, has formally requested that the College Board do a rewrite. The Georgia Senate has passed a resolution to encourage competition for the College Board’s AP program. If anything brings a change, it is likely to be such pressure from the states, which provide the College Board with substantial revenue.

Some 20 years ago, as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, I made a grant to a group to create voluntary standards for U.S. history. When the project was finished, I had standards on my hands that were overwhelmingly negative about the American story, so biased that I felt obliged to condemn them in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal called “The End of History.”

I learned an important lesson, one worth repeating today. The curriculum shouldn’t be farmed out, not to the federal government and not to private groups. It should stay in the hands of the people who are constitutionally responsible for it: the citizens of each state.

Mrs. Cheney, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, writes about history. Her most recent book is “James Madison: A Life Reconsidered” (Viking, 2014).
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Ted Cruz Gets Common Core Way Better Than ThinkProgress Does

ThinkProgress has not one but two articles bashing this tweet from Sen. (and now presidential candidate) Ted Cruz:  Federal Govt has no business sticking its nose in education. We need to repeal every word of Common Core! #nhpolitics #MakeDCListen  The headlines pretty much sum it up: “Ted Cruz Makes Impassioned Plea For Repeal Of Federal Legislation That Does Not Exist” and “Every Claim In This Ted Cruz Statement Is Completely False.” The second critiques this statement from Cruz’s spokeswoman: “Common Core is a federally created curriculum that the state’s ‘Race to the Top’ grants are tied to. So if the state does not adopt the standards, it gives up the grant money. But since the federal government created this mess, there should be a way to undo it.”

Read more at the Heartland Institute Blog Read More......

Common Core's Dirtiest Trick: Dividing Parents and Children

By Bruce Deitrick Price When you look back at New Math (ca. 1965) and Reform Math (ca. 1990), one of the most striking and persistent features was that parents could not understand the homework their children brought home. Mystified parents were trying to advise mystified children. The parents, presumably the wise members of the society, were helpless to say anything useful when confronted by the weird complexities of “reform” math, which has now been rolled forward into Common Core. Here is a commonplace horror story that can stand in for millions of others: “When Mike and Camille Chudzinski tried to help their son with his homework earlier this fall, they were bewildered. The fourth-grader brought home no spelling lists, few textbooks, and a whole new approach to solving math problems. When he tackled multi-digit addition, for instance, Patrick did not just line up the two numbers and then add the columns, as his parents had been taught to do. Instead, he sketched…

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Indiana Ends Common Core Education Standards

Indiana’s experiment with Common Core is over. ✧ Gov. Mike Pence signed legislation Monday requiring the state to come up with its own academic standards, making Indiana the latest state to pull its support for the national education standards known as Common Core.

“I believe our students are best served when decisions about education are made at the state and local level. By signing this legislation, Indiana has taken an important step forward in developing academic standards that are written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers, and are uncommonly high.”

Read more at The Foundry Read More......

Education: Too Late to Save English Departments?

By Mary Grabar
Thankfully, much is being made of Heather Mac Donald’s recent piece, “The Humanities and Us,” [HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING] in the City Journal. She illustrates the decline of college English departments, where “gender, sexuality, race, and class” have taken over Chaucer, Milton, and Shakespeare. The radicals of the 60s and 70s are firmly in charge; their diktats have attacked the hallmarks of literary study; and Mac Donald rightly calls for a return to standards at colleges. But standards won’t do any good if incoming freshmen are incapable of reading, thinking independently, and using logic. That has already begun to be the case, and it is going to get worse thanks to new “standards” known as Common Core.

Read more at The Pope Center for Higher Education Policy Read More......

TN Student Speaks Out About Common Core, Teacher Evaluations, and Educational Data

Allan West: Common Core is the Obamacare of education – high school senior explains why

While attention is on the debacle that is Obamacare, there is another even more disturbing comprehensive government program being implemented called “Common Core” a set of educational guidelines that were never voted on by Congress, the Department of Education nor by local or state governments. Read more…

Published on YouTube by Ethan Young [the eloquent high school senior speaking in this video], Nov 7, 2013 - Recorded at the Knox County School Board Regular Meeting, November 6, 2013. "Share this video with and spread the message: we will not accept these issues with education." Read More......

Common Core or Common failure? Families pull kids out of class

HILLSBORO, Ore. – Nine parents pulled their seventh- and eighth-graders out of math class and started teaching them at home, because they are upset with the new Common Core curriculum that public schools in Oregon are starting this year.  Seventh-grader Amy Craig has always been an "A" student in math until this year. She came home with a "D."  The same thing happened to other students in her school. So their moms got together and decided to teach math themselves – an hour every morning. Then the kids go off to school for the rest of the day.  This is the first school year when every public school in Oregon is using Common Core teaching standards. Forty-five other states use those, too.

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School Test Teaches Kids: “Commands Of Government Officials Must Be Obeyed By All”

By Steve Watson - A parent of a ten year old was shocked to discover a grammar and writing test paper that their[sic] child brought home from school reads more like [a] document from an authoritarian country such as China. Read more at InfoWars…

(Hat tip: Tom) Read More......

Top public schools demand more than Common Core

By Joy Pullmann (Hat tip: Kristie Hernandez) - The best U.S. public schools — including those with high numbers of poor and minority kids — require more of students than state standards and Common Core, and school leaders attribute their success partly to these high expectations.

The Common Core lists what its creators think students should know in K-12 math and English. Forty-five states agreed to it under pressure from the Obama administration in 2010. The Core calls itself “rigorous” and “internationally benchmarked,” but investigation into actually rigorous and internationally competitive standards within the United States casts doubt on these claims. Read more at Watchdog.org... Read More......

How NOT to argue with parents about Common Core

By Michelle Malkin - As an outspoken critic of the federal academic standards scheme known as Common Core, I’d like to offer some friendly advice to opponents. Stop insulting. Stop digging. Stop projecting. Start listening. ✧ Central planners in Washington have been caught off-guard by the grassroots revolt against the national standards/testing/curriculum juggernaut. Real input from the hoi polloi was never a part of the grand implementation process. So when parents and educators in dozens of states started challenging the privacy intrusions posed by and the constitutionality, cost, quality and validity of Common Core, its architects went on the attack. ✧ And now, the education control freaks are freaking out. Read More at Michelle Malkin... Read More......

Indoctrination in Common Core ELA Texts

Please watch! See Flyer for AFP and Capitol Watch Rally on Capitol Steps in Salem, 11AM-1PM, Wednesday, September 18, 2013

(Hat tip: Democrats Against U.N. Agenda 21, "This is Common Core. Common Core is Agenda 21.")

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Scores on Math and English Tests Plummet After State Adopts New Standards

The number of New York students passing state reading and math exams dropped drastically this year, education officials reported on Wednesday, unsettling parents, principals and teachers and posing new challenges to a national effort to toughen academic standards.

In New York City, 26 percent of students in third through eighth grade passed the tests in English, and 30 percent passed in math, according to the New York State Education Department.

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Did you learn math this way?

From Stop Common Core/North Carolina - "Parents of young children, this video is especially for you. I hope this will encourage you to pick up the phone and call or write an email to your state rep and voice your concerns. Please share this with other parents. How much whiteboard space would be needed to add $17 trillion? (sorry, I digress but could not help myself). As I learn more, I will be writing more about TERC." --NC Citizen

Read Bill Quirk's review: TERC Hands-On Math: A Snapshot View

After watching the video, click 'comments' and give us your thoughts. I'd call this child abuse. --bc

7/13 UPDATE: Ah, I see there are no comments even after I asked!  So do I stand alone against this stuff? Hello... Read More......

The Frederick Douglass Foundation Condemns Installation of Common Core

Frederick Douglass Foundation - While much of America’s attention has been focused on an awful economy, the nationalization of healthcare and the Obama administration’s use of government regulatory agencies to persecute its political opponents and spy on all Americans, too few are even aware of President Obama’s attempt to nationalize the public educational system. In preparation for the national implementation of a program called Common Core, using bribery in the form of federal funds for state governments and even private schools that adopt the plan, they’ve been testing this insidious indoctrination scheme in the state of Texas.

Read more: Frederick Douglass Foundation (search: "common core") Read More......

Two Moms vs. Common Core

Indiana has become the first state to retreat from the Common Core standards, as Governor Mike Pence has just signed a bill suspending their implementation.

A great deal has been written and spoken about Common Core, but it is worth rehearsing the outlines again. Common Core is a set of math and English standards developed largely with Gates Foundation money and pushed by the Obama administration and the National Governors Association. The standards define what every schoolchild should learn each year, from first grade through twelfth, and the package includes teacher evaluations tied to federally funded tests designed to ensure that schools teach to Common Core.

Over 40 states hurriedly adopted Common Core, some before the standards were even written, in response to the Obama administration’s making more than $4 billion in federal grants conditional on their doing so. Only Texas, Alaska, Virginia, and Nebraska declined. (Minnesota adopted the English but not the math standards.)

Read more at National Review Read More......