Negative findings about Common Core

This year, we vote and choose the people that will impact our lives the most closely, and especially for those of us with children in school. We have some big issues in schools, like ever-increasing automatic spending due to unsustainable contracts filled with unfunded pensions with matching yearly tax hikes. 

If that wasn’t bad enough, we recently got a poisoned gift basket with a bunch of very expensive nonsense from the federal government called “Common Core”. Its implementation costs alone are estimated at 650,000,000 for Pennsylvania and you PT resident are on the list to pay half  for our local schools. In comparison, the PA State Education spending is about 5,500,000,000 with about 2% increases in the past 3 budgets.

Some say the federal mandate comes with some funding and “grants”, but paying only part of the fare should not let anyone decide how and where the bus is going. For example we locals have to buy their approved books, use their approved tests in approved rooms. I’ll bet you PTSD doesn’t have enough rooms with proper lighting and spacing between students or the right kind of computers in the right places and we have to build and buy them all RIGHT NOW.  

There is some room in the regulations to pick and choose books, but from the ones already approved, the choices are not appealing and outlook is grim for the future. The books in the common core curriculum that create the scandals come with no definition of good and evil anywhere – because we should all know that judging is bad and what can you possibly know at the age of 10 in this age of moral relativism? They are teaching kids to be unable to know evil when they are staring it in the face. This comes from  the evaluation of the approved books coming from teachers that have taught children every day for 30 years of more. These approved books have stories and “morals” about useless rules that can change on a whim and apply nowhere outside of school walls but the Common Core apologists claim they can’t teach them any parts of Exodus 20:2-17 which have only been around for a few thousand years with a proven track record.  

Next, we have the scandalously approved Common Core science and math books that  feature ways of getting good grades for “good intentions” instead of getting good grades mainly for the right answers. We’re teaching kids that it’s ok to “try”, but that useless school skill won’t help any of us when we’re competing with the world – and the rest of the world is actually learning and doing real things!! -  for any knowledge based jobs that seem to be many of the well paid jobs held by PT residents in management, accounting, medicine, science, technology, and engineering .  

 I have many other grievances with regards to Common Core. First I hear people call it a law, but it was never voted by Congress/Senate and signed by the President. Some of the feds politely call it a “Common Core grant” but to me it's just a bribe as the feds have no legal constitutional authority to tell local schools what to do BUT they will send a check if you can "please" implement federal policies. 

Finally, your kids will be measured and tracked more closely than any cattle on any ranch and there are no defined limits to the data being gathered about you, your home, your voting history, and your children or how and with whom all the information will be either secured or shared. Let that all that sink in and tell me with conviction that you want Common Core in Peters Township schools.  

For now in PA, our elected officials made sure we get our fair share of federal money so we have a resolution Pennsylvania HR 338 which was almost unanimously approved this summer by both Democrats and Republicans, however PA maintains its right to decide and legislate about schools.

Below is just a punch list of extra-legal language that the US Press should simply expose and US Congress  should strike from the budget, and with any luck , we can get some real opposition at the PA state and local levels too.

( a reference: http://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/ )

FACT#1 : CCSSI was never approved by Congress, but was embedded in the “four assurances” that the U.S. Department of Education required of governors to apply for State Fiscal Stabilization Funds and Race to the Top grants financed by the American Recovery Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Comment: The USA is a Republic of laws, not this European style of rule of bribes by the civil servants!

FACT#2: Individual school districts are fully committed to paying unknown costs associated with implementing Common Core assessment plans and the purchase of whatever is necessary, of which tax payers and ANY of their elected representatives never had any input. This is taxation without representation.

 FACT#3 CCSSI was presented as an enticement for “Race to the Top” funds and the waiver of “No Child Left Behind.” Because “No Child Left Behind” saddled school districts with the unrealistic requirement that 100% of students be proficient in reading and math by 2014, a waiver was a must to avoid loss of accreditation.

 FACT#4 CCSSI, which is an integral component of a U.S. Department of Education plan to collect a large amount of data on students as well as teachers, could lead to unauthorized sale or sharing of personal data. Although, it has not presented a problem to date, few states if any has no formal restrictions on populating data systems designed according to the National Data Model of over 400 data points including non-education related information such as religion, voting history, biometric data, etc.

Again, let that all that sink in and tell me with conviction that you want Common Core in Peters Township schools.