COMMON CORE, CHOICE, AND CHARTER SCHOOLS
By
Anita Hoge
September 18, 2014
NewsWithViews.com
While everyone is out there debating Common Core, there is a system of standardization being put in place. And, if you are unaware of this system, what you don't know about Common Core, Choice, and Charter Schools CAN hurt you.
This story tells a different Common Core tale with a much different ending than those who support choice might want. What most people are NOT thinking about is why education is one of the most important functions of our Republic. The answer to this question is important for all of us. Not only are we educating our future citizens, but through the local elections of our school board members they have the ultimate authority over our taxing system through property taxes. How do these "education reforms" impact our representative government?
When you consider that there is a movement to destroy our representative government, “common core, choice and charter school initiatives" become the perfect impetus to change our American system by (1) moving away from teaching content to a "conditioning" process, and (2) changing how elected local school board members will no longer be minding our local treasury, property taxes. This overview tells a different story about where we are in this process than what you will find in most other debates about Common Core and Choice. Lets focus on the facts and think about how Charter Schools will impact the future of America.
Think about this. If we no longer have public schools with locally elected school board members, what will happen to your taxes? What happens to your vote and your voice in government? If our public school system is changed to a privatized “choice” system that uses our hard earned taxes with no elected boards, who controls what is taught? The parents? The citizen voters? Charter Schools are the ultimate goal for the takeover of public education. Charter schools are privately owned, usually for profit, with no elected local school board members, and they use public tax money. Plus, parents have no say in how they are run or what is taught.
Think about this. There were three major actions under the Obama administration, without legislative approval, to change two hundred years of traditional public education in the United States. (1) The Common Core copyright, which created a national curriculum and national testing mandating that individual students meet individual standards (similar to the Obamacare individual mandate). (2) Unlocking data 'to flow' through the Family Education Rights in Privacy Act, FERPA, which allows personally identifiable information on our children to flow to outside 3rd party contractors for research and curriculum development to match Common Core. And, (3) No Child Left Behind Flexibility Waiver, (ESEA, Elementary and Secondary Education Act), that is re-training teachers to teach to Common Core. This also allowed ALL children in public school to be funded under Title I by changing the definition of who is poor or educationally deprived to anyone not meeting Common Core. (Free and reduced lunch guidelines of 40% schoolwide were dropped to 0%.) These three important points control standards and testing, curriculum, and teachers with all public school children being funded under Title I.
So the question that must be asked is what else must be changed to move toward this direction – this plan to destroy public education and collapse our old system of representative government? A key element is federal “choice” which is vehemently supported by Republicans. The stage has already been set with charter schools. Caps have been removed on establishing charter schools in many states because of promises made to Obama when accepting Race to the Top grants. Secretary of Education Duncan dealt out illegal No Child Left Behind Flexibility Waivers (ESEA) that changed Title I funding to blanket an entire public school. Every child becomes Title I where money 'follows the child' and this targets EVERY child in public school to change toward Common Core without a law being passed. .
Now consider this! How can Republicans and Democrats, with the help of President Obama and Secretary Duncan, be sure that ALL children in the United States—ALL CHILDREN, even in every private and religious school—come under the federal thumb of Common Core? They are going to GIVE those Title I funds to EVERY child in private and religious schools with FEDERAL CHOICE. With federal choice ALL schools become government schools and all schools must teach Common Core. This is what federal choice is all about—getting control of all Catholic, Christian, and private schools.
Add to this federal over-reach, the system for compliance, Total Quality Management [TQM], a business model for accountability, is the system for control. Data collection is the key to TQM by monitoring and assessing individuals continuously. By linking and cross-referencing all data in the following components, this will allow each area to be an easy target for government intervention for equity in education. This is a system where individuals are monitored for government compliance and where charter schools become the model for a government takeover. Nationalizing education in the United States and removing locally elected officials ARE the primary targets of the Obama administration.
This model is sometimes very difficult for Americans to understand because there are so many moving parts and name changes, especially under Democratic and Republican administrations who both want the same thing. The following explanation of our present condition in education, and how it relates to diminishing our representative government, tells what is needed to collapse our system of local government. This will give you an idea of how close we are to losing America as we know it.
The following list is what is needed to accomplish the goals of 'Obama's Equity in Education Plan' for our entire country:
• charter schools replace public schools:
• everyone has federal Title I choice funds to go to any school (charter, private or religious schools):
• every child is taught the same standards:
• every teacher must teach the same standards:
• every test must be aligned to these standards:
• curriculum and software is aligned to standards:
• everything listed here is aligned to government data collection compliance.
Here are the details of this plan and its implementation:
The Goal: Align huge amounts of federal money toward standards, testing, teacher evaluations, data collection, and interventions to control what students know and what they can do.
The Answer: Race to the Top ($4.35 billion), No Child Left Behind (ESEA Flexibility Waivers and Title I), the proposed ESEA Re-Authorization (No Child Left Behind, Elementary and Secondary Education Act), America Competes Act, and all children will be screened using Special Education funding, IDEA, Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act.
The Goal: Make sure all students are taught the same by flattening the bell curve (every student meets the same standards) and destroying competition (no ABCDF's). Change the educational system away from academic content to control over what is taught through an individual career pathway. Expand standards to the affective domain (conditioning) which means teaching and testing to remediate a child’s values, attitudes and beliefs to a government desired outcome.
The Answer: Common Core creates a national curriculum and a national test nationalizing education in the US standardizing and controlling the standards in each state through a copyright which removed local control of the curriculum. The College Career Citizenship Standards adds "readiness" to the standards expanding to dispositions, attitudes, values, social and emotional learning or grit for easy conditioning (brainwashing, mental health cleansing, and social engineering). Since control has been removed from the local level, now the federal government controls what the standards are and what will be taught in every school.
The Goal: Make sure all curriculum and software is validated and matched to exact same Common Core standards.
The Answer: Allow personally identifiable information to be released on students without parental knowledge or consent for research to validate curriculum matched to standards. Obama issues an Executive Order that "unlocks" FERPA, Family Educational Rights in Privacy Act, that allows third-party vendors access to a child’s personal data, including DNA sequences. Massive research is being done in the non-cognitive and affective domain. Mental health and mastery learning (functional literacy) for workforce training replaces content based on academics. Personality change and behavioral soft skills are deceptively named grit, deeper learning, school climate, safe environments, code of conduct, social and emotional learning, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal skills. Research and data trafficking of personally identifiable information on your child is rampant.
The Goal: Use illegal tactics to change federal law by using ESEA Flexibility Waivers to change the criteria so that ALL STUDENTS in public schools are identified under Title I.
The Answer: President Obama and Secretary of Education Duncan removed poverty guideline levels, thus making ALL children Title I, so ALL children in the public schools can be funded to meet the same Common Core government standards bypassing Congressional authority.
The Goal: Make sure EVERY student is achieving Common Core standards.
The Answer: Make sure the national test measures Common Core (functional literacy and behavioral outcomes) for accountability. Test, then remediate. Every child will have a 'career pathway' similar to an IEP in Special Ed. (Every child has a disability if they are not meeting Common Core standards.) Create interventions forcing compliance to Common Core (including mental health standards) for each student through IDEA, Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act. ALL children must be screened and remediated to meet government Common Core standards with interventions in the regular classroom, paid for through Special Ed funding—called Response to Interventions or Multi-tiered System of Support. Both academics and personality change are the targets for each child under a career pathway. Brainwashing commences to government controlled behavioral standards.
The Goal: Make sure all teachers are teaching the same standards and make sure all testing measures teacher performance for accountability.
The Answer: Teach to the test by creating teacher value added models (VAM). All teachers must be forced to teach Common Core. This is done by evaluating teachers on how their students score on tests, thus forcing them into compliance. ALL teachers must comply to teach government Common Core Standards and teach to the test. Training for teachers is a MUST, because if teachers are not teaching Common Core exactly per the government criteria, children will not meet the standards. Teachers are penalized for variables out of their control. (Extensive teacher training in the ESEA Flexibility Waiver: training includes: Charlotte Danielson Teacher Evaluations, Robert Marzano, Pelligrino's 21st Century Skills, and Webb's Deeper Learning.)
The Goal: Make ALL students in the United States funded as Title I via 'follow the child' vouchers in Obama's Equity in Education Plan:
The Answer: Federal “choice” is not yet achieved, but, this is how it will be done. The Obama Equity Agenda is in the Re-Authorization of No Child Left Behind, ESEA, (out of committee and ready to be legislated into law) for funding that will "follow the child" under Title I, where ALL individual children must be identified and funded for meeting government Common Core Standards. The waivers have already changed Title I in public schools. So, the Republicans have attached amendments onto ESEA allowing a “CHOICE” voucher that equalizes the funding for EVERY child. This voucher will have a student's name on it and is in every backpack of EVERY child. These amendments to ESEA call for federal “choice” vouchers to go to any child to go to any school they choose, including private and religious schools. Think about the impact.
There will be an exodus out of the public school system into charter and private schools. This wipes out zip codes being destinations for a "better" education—no more wealthy school districts. Public schools will collapse. This wipes out locally elected school boards. Any private or religious school accepting a "choice" child must teach Common Core. Obama calls this "fiscal smoothing" when every child is funded the same way. All schools—private, charter and religious schools—become government schools that must teach Common Core. Also keep in mind the states filing lawsuits against the legislatures for the unconstitutionality of funding schools, where judges are ruling inequities in rich and poor school districts.
The Goal: Make sure elected school boards are destroyed.
The Answer: Create no caps on charter schools on the state level to replace public schools. Removal of locally elected school boards is a must for the private/public privatization scheme to work. Charter school investors, like Reed Hastings of Netflix, want to get rid of locally elected school boards (He has openly stated this, watch him HERE). Obama wants bold federal action to distribute funds based on student need, not zip code, and establish a process for replacing chronically ineffective locally elected school boards. This is the set-up to destroy our representative form of government at the local level.
The Goal: Make it very profitable for private enterprises and business to invest in Charter Schools.
The Answer: The U.S. Secretary of Education can award grants for the “Credit Enhancement for Charter School Facilities” program which subsidizes and awards private entities with federal funding. Charter schools are privately run but receive public money and, as already noted, an increasing proportion of them are being run on a for-profit basis. Charter schools can access private sector and other non-Federal capital in order to acquire, construct, and renovate facilities at a reasonable cost. The tax code makes charter schools very lucrative.
Statistics have proven that where charter schools have proliferated, it is more likely that the public schools will experience financial stress. This is especially difficult for local school boards with the transfer of public assets and institutions into the hands of private corporations. The “New Markets Tax Credit” program that became law toward the end of the Clinton presidency, allows firms to invest in charters and other projects located in “underserved” areas. They can collect a generous tax credit up to 39% to offset their costs. No wonder private investors are flocking to charter schools! There is a huge risk factor for any local school district in a state that passed laws promoting “choice” along with an easy approval process for new charters, especially with no caps on expansion. Race to the Top grants accentuated this process with states promising to drop their caps on charter schools when they took the money. This is the plan for confiscating our tax money. Your hard-earned money will come out of your pocket and go into the pockets of corporations.
The Goal: Eliminate public schools that aren't meeting Common Core.
The Answer: Government takeover of schools not meeting Common Core government standards is called academic bankruptcy, priority or focus schools, and turn-around schools under ESEA Flexibility Waivers. These failing schools are a target for takeover if they do not improve their scores on Common Core national tests which ultimately points the finger at teachers. These schools will be turned into charter schools. Parent Trigger Laws also create a charter school. This continues the elimination of locally elected school board members and continues expanding charter schools that have no elected boards accountable to parents, citizens and taxpayers.
The Goal: Collapse the taxing structure in your neighborhood.
The Answer: When public schools collapse because of charter school expansion and federal “choice,” this will eliminate taxes based on property. This will seem to equalize rich and poor school districts by funding all children the same. Obama doesn't think it is "fair" that there are rich school districts and poor school districts. Regionalizing where your tax money goes, and pulling the taxing authority away from the local level toward regional industry clusters, is the plan. Obama's Equity in Education Plan or "fiscal smoothing" and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act align the skill needs of industries in each state economy or regional economy and places decision-making authority in the hands of unelected workforce development boards.
The Goal: Create a longitudinal database to monitor EVERY individual in the system funded from the America Competes Act.
The Answer: The state longitudinal data system, SLDS, with cross-referencing capabilities to monitor students, teachers, testing, curriculum, principals, superintendents, schools, school districts, and states, with an overall fiscal responsibility, will pinpoint each aspect and every person in the system above for accountability and compliance. Updating technology in every school a must. This is the onerous enforcement mechanism.
The Goal: Eliminate states’ rights control of funding.
The Answer: Federal “choice” will eliminate state-level authority because of flow-through Title I funds when funding directly 'follows the child' from the federal level, thus eliminating states’ rights. Vouchers are now directed to the individual child. Thus the removal of states rights’ when federal Title I funds pass-through directly to the child.
|
|
No
voice. No vote. Government controls everything in education.
An equitable government controlled system, with only privatized contract
schools, that teaches only a government controlled curriculum, and forces
everyone to comply to government controlled standards through accountability.
I think this is called communism.
If American parents really thought about this, there would be another American Revolution. Shouldn't we all be thinking about this? The implications of this true story are real. From my vantage point, I would say we are mostly toward the end of the true American story. This isn’t just about the children. It affects us all.
Share
This Article
