Dr. Dennis Cuddy -- Common Core, Part 10

COMMON CORE
PART 10

By Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D.
October 19, 2015
NewsWithViews.com

The next major step in the development of CC occurred in June 2008 when the NGA co-hosted an education forum with the Hunt Institute (a project of former N.C. Governor James B. Hunt, Jr.---see my previous NewsWithViews columns regarding Jim Hunt as an agent of the Power Elite, PE). This was followed by the June 1, 2009 release of a report that 46 states had joined a "State-Led Process to Develop a Common Core of Standards."

The NGA, CCSSO and Achieve had already issued their own report calling for national education standards, and although the process of developing the standards is advertised as "state-led," the license agreement with says: "NGA/CCSSO shall be acknowledged as the sole owners and developers of the Common Core State Standards." In case you think this means the and CCSSO take responsibility for the results of CC, the license goes on to say in capital letters: "THE COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS ARE PROVIDED AS-IS AND WITH ALL FAULTS, AND NGA CENTER/CCSSO MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES OF TITLE, MERCHANTIBILITY (sic), FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NONINFRIGEMENT, ACCURACY, OR THE PRESENCE OR ABSENCE OF ERRORS, WHETHER OR NOT DISCOVERABLE....UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHALL NGA CENTER OR CCSSO , INDIVIDUALLY OR JOINTLY, BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY LEGAL THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER FOR CONTRACT, TORT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR A COMBINATION THEREOF (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THE COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH RISK AND POTENTIAL DAMAGE WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGO LICENSEE WAIVES THE RIGHT TO SEEK LEGAL REDRESS AGAINST, AND RELEASES FROM ALL LIABILITY AND COVENANTS NOT TO SUE, NGA CENTER AND CCSSO."

Entering the picture at this time is Sir Michael Barber, placing CC in a global setting (even the Programme for International Student Assessment is being aligned with CC). In May 2010, he founded the U.S. Education Delivery Institute, which formed a partnership with Achieve to provide leadership training for CC. Barber also became the leader for the PARCC consortium. So who is Sir Michael Barber? He is the chief education officer for the Pearson Foundation which has offices in over 70 nations. Pearson has taken over many education publishing companies (e.g., the education divisions of HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Addison-Wesley Longman, etc.). Barber majored in history at Oxford University and taught in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia), and is no doubt familiar with Cecil Rhodes. In November 2012, he began the Learning Curve for Pearson, but it was commissioned by THE ECONOMIST (magazine) Intelligence Unit (which has connections with MI6, British Intelligence). Jeb Bush is a leading candidate (and PE favorite) in the 2016 presidential race, and Pearson has been a top corporate sponsor of Bush's education foundation.

According to author Orlean Koehle in THE HIDDEN C's OF COMMON CORE, there are 5 lead writers for the CC assessments, none of whom has any K-12 classroom teaching experience in the subjects for which they prepared the assessments. Two of these, College Board head (since 2012) David Coleman in English and Jason Zimba in math, are Rhodes scholars (remember Cecil Rhodes and his secret Society of the Elect "to take the government of the whole world" wanted to penetrate 4 main areas, one of which was education). Coleman and Zimba had gone to Chicago with their New York organization The Grow Network to produce data studies for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) with Board member Barack Obama, who had been recruited there by radical Bill Ayers (Obama was CAC's first chairman and Ayers co-chairman, serving together for 8 years). Although CC is advertised as promoting high standards, Zimba speaking before the Massachusetts Department of Education (March 2010) admitted that the CC math standards would only prepare students for a minimum junior college level (see Koehle). For one thing, CC defers algebra until 9th grade, which makes it difficult to complete calculus in high school and therefore more difficult to get in the better colleges.

On February 19, 2014 National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel posted a letter on NEAToday.org stating: "Seven of ten teachers believe that implementation of the standards is going poorly in their schools. Worse yet, teachers report that there has been little to no attempt to allow educators to share what's needed to get (CC) implementation right. In fact, two-thirds of all teachers report that they have not even been asked how to implement these new standards in their classrooms."

Two months later, on Stephen Colbert's April 8, 2014 TV show, he said: "I have long opposed Obama's Common Core education curriculum that sets uniform standards across all the States. Different States have different values. I don't want my kids ending up on Colorado's drug educatin couse that classifies weed as a condiment. As much as I didn't expect it, I may be coming around to the common core, as it turns out Common Core testing prepares our youth for what they will face as adults, constant stress and confusion...and passive, aggression note taking." He later gives an example of a 2nd grader explaining how he got a math answer. The child wrote: "I got the answer by talking in my brain and I agreed with the answer that my brain got."

Click here for part -----> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11,

Dennis Laurence Cuddy, historian and political analyst, received a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (major in American History, minor in political science). Dr. Cuddy has taught at the university level, has been a political and economic risk analyst for an international consulting firm, and has been a Senior Associate with the U.S. Department of Education.

Cuddy has also testified before members of Congress on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice. Dr. Cuddy has authored or edited twenty books and booklets, and has written hundreds of articles appearing in newspapers around the nation, including The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and USA Today. He has been a guest on numerous radio talk shows in various parts of the country, such as ABC Radio in New York City, and he has also been a guest on the national television programs USA Today and CBS's Nightwatch.

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