Posted below by Lisa Skumanich was in response to a question I had asked about exactly “Who” puts these testing materials together and why can’t they, that person, be held accountable for what they are doing.
The reply from Lisa is long but she seems to really know her facts. I find it to be VERY informative, and to me fits the missing pieces to the puzzle to what I have seen. My biggest questions was why? To any of these changes. The same answer that has always been given to me is “Its to better prepare them for College and life. To teach them how to think and not just how to test well” I have not seen that. I think the answer is much more related to money. I feel like we have opened our system up to people that have paid for that access.
She basically covered all of my questions and concerns as to what I don’t like about CC. I am VERY uncomfortable with a lot of the personal questions being asked and saved as Data. They are being tested on things, that to me, have nothing to do with my children’s education. There is a reason for this. There is a price to be paid when someone comes to you with money and says this money is free, but only if you sign up for my program site unseen. It’s NOT free and I have yet to see any results showing improvement. I seen none in my children, nor have any parents come to me and say how great this change is. Trust me on this SOMEONE is making a ton of money and getting an unbelievable amount of information on not just our children, but every single member of that Childs entire family.
Randall Sawyer
The federal government by law is prohibited from implementing a national curriculum or standards. To get around this the Gates Foundation funded the CCSS program through a non profit company called Achieve Inc. In order for states to benefit from the money they had to sign on to accepting and implementing the CCSS sight unseen. This was done even before the standards were finished being written or approved. They were written by the NGA (national governors association) and the CCSSO (chief counsel of school states officers) both of which are politicians and law makers not educators. Pearson Education has the monopoly on the textbooks, standardized tests, and data collection warehouses that are all a part of the CCSS. States have the choice to participate but must accept all or nothing in order to receive the money. They say states have the freedom to develop and choose their own curriculums but keep in mind that almost all publishing companies are aligning to the CCSS. Look for Pearson Publishing and it’s affiliates to be the main supplier for textbooks and tests in your area. Another major problem with the standards is that the only two education experts involved (they were asked to join the validation committee and sign off on them even before the standards were complete) refused to sign off on them. The ELA expert is Dr. Sandra Stotsky and the Math expert is James Milgren .( youtube them to see testimony) They have both testified publically many times as to the deficiencies in the standards, such as being developmentally inappropriate in the ELA standards and as putting our kids behind 2 years in the math standards. Many teachers and administrators have bought into the lies that these standards make children think more critically therefore they must be good standards. The fact is that good teachers illicit critical thinking from their students no matter what the standards. CC also requires even more testing to take place. More testing is not the answer to education reform. The only reason to test on this scale is to continue to pump money into certain schools and divert it away from the neediest of children and to collect even more data on our children. The data collection aspect of Race to the Top and CCSS is also quite disturbing. Ask yourself why our children’s data (not limited to reading and math but also including religion, parents political affiliation, health, and psychological data) needs to be collected on a national basis and stored in a national data base controlled by a 3rd party such as Pearson and Microsoft (look into inbloom and the microsoft corporation for more info on that). Also, under the CCSS all children are expected to meet all standards but the problem with that is all children don’t develop at the same rate and many children have special needs which won’t be met under these standards. IEP’s (individual education plans) will be obsolete because the standards insist that all children perform to the standards regardless of ability. Individuals can not be standardized. It’s an oxymoron. I see this happening in schools right now. Children are being pushed into gen ed classrooms and expected to keep up and perform as the rest of the class and are not being given accommodations they should as afforded on their IEP’s. On paper they are but in reality they are not. There is nothing common or standard about our kids. You can’t just fit them all into the one size fits all box called the common core. Not to mention this mess called the CCSS was never presented to the people, never spoken about publically, and was never voted on by the people. States signed on in the dead of night without so much as a whisper because they wanted the money. Now parents are starting to see the effects and are rightfully screaming mad. You have rights as parents to say no to the CC and to standardized testing. You can opt your children out of all standardized testing and testing for the sole purpose of evaluating teachers, and demand your states withdraw from themselves from the CCSS and Race to the Top initiative. You can also prohibit your children from taking any surveys or questionnaires that ask for information that is private or personal. The only tests I allow my 4th grade daughter to take are teacher assessments in class used to determine her understanding of the material presented to her. That’s it. No computer based reading or math programs that collect any sort of data either. Children should be taught by a teacher not a computer.
Lisa Skumanich
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