WHEREAS, Common Core changes the fundamental role of education - from teaching HOW to think and process information to WHAT to think. Common Core teaches for job placement. The emphasis that Common Core puts on "job placement" puts the focus of our education system primarily on the economy and not on the well-being of our children; and
WHEREAS, Common Core will not only apply to all public schools, but it will affect charter schools, private schools, Christian schools and homeschooling as well. Recent statements from the College Board make clear that they are making the move to changing the SAT to reflect the CC as well (encouraged to accept only students who have an education based on CC). If the SAT is based on one curriculum, private school and home school curriculum may be forced to conform; and
WHEREAS, the Common Core standards are copyrighted by the NGA and CCSSO and therefore protected by intellectual property. Hence states are issued licenses to use them and forbidden, for the most part, from making any changes to them. In other words, Common Core, if fully enacted, will end the historical and legal rights of our communities to determine what our children are taught and how the material will be taught; and
WHEREAS, Common Core is being promoted as being "standards-based," the truth is that educators have always had standards, guidelines, or benchmarks to guide curriculum? What is different all of sudden is that government is sliding towards a socialist agenda where it seeks a "one-size-fits-all" centralized scheme in regulating the lives of citizens; and
WHEREAS, the promoters of the CC standards claim they are based in research, the truth is that the creators were not researchers or educators or otherwise qualified to write the standards; and
WHEREAS, Common Core is an "untested" curriculum, which has not been field-tested anywhere, and which comes with a potential human price tag (requiring experimenting on our precious children), and which interferes with parental control and parental choice in the upbringing of their children; and
WHEREAS, our future depends on the next generation being able to solve the serious problems we face, and sub-standard government run education will only make things worse;
WHEREAS, Common Core comes with an enormous price tag (independent estimates put the cost at $14-16 billion over 7 years) yet that cost is not built in anywhere; and
WHEREAS, at its "core," Common Core is essentially a social engineering experiment; and
WHEREAS, Common Core is a nationalized federal government takeover of our Education system which runs afoul of the Tenth Amendment, as education is a right reserved to the States. The government certainly doesn't have the power to create a one-size-fits-all take-over of education on all levels yet it uses its power of conditional spending to achieve the same purpose (an end-run around the Constitution). If the federal government has enough money to bribe the states to adopt its policies with taxpayer money, then the government is clearly overtaxing the American people. It should tax less and allow the states to tax more so at least the states can use its people's money to serve their interests; and
WHEREAS, Common Core will force consistency and uniformity across the nation. As long as the States are bribed and coerced into adopting a national one-size-fits-all education scheme, then education in general will suffer severely because the states, as 50 independent laboratories of experimentation, will be precluded from trying to innovate and improve education and find solutions to the problems that plague our current education system (in other words, this imposed uniformity will stifle the innovation that federalism fosters).
THEREFORE, let it be --
RESOLVED, that the _______________________ (name of group) demands that the state Board of Education and our state legislators acknowledge and address the criticisms of the CC standards; and
RESOLVED, that the _______________________ (name of group) rejects the collection of personal student data for any non-educational purpose without the prior written consent of an adult student or a child student's parent and that it rejects the sharing of such personal data, without the prior written consent of an adult student or a child student's parent, with any person or entity other than schools or education agencies within the state, and
RESOLVED, that the _______________________ (name of group) emphatically urges NC state officials to repeal the numerous federal regulations which interfere with State and local control of public schools, and
RESOLVED, that the _______________________ (name of group) urges our Legislators to get further involved in the current debate over Common Core, to halt implementation of the standards while a state initiative is pursued to do due diligence and perhaps take an independent state-based approach to the improvement of our education system, and to eventually introduce legislation to remove this system permanently from our schools in North Carolina.
References:
1. www.corestandards.org
2. Federal Law 20 USC 1232a-Sec. 1232a. and The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Pub.L. 89-10, 79 Stat. 27, 20 US.C. ch. 70.
http://us-code.vlex.com/vid/prohibition-against-federal-control-19195093
3. Diane Rufino, "'Common Core or 'Rotten to the Core' - You Decide," For Love of God and Country, May 11, 2013. Referenced at: www.forloveofgodandcountry.com
4. Common Core Terms of Use - http://www.corestandards.org/terms-of-use
Article References:
Department of Education. "President Obama, U.S. Secretary of Education Duncan Announce National Competition to Advance School Reform," Ed.gov, July 24, 2009. Referenced at: http://www2.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2009/07/07242009.htm
Kristina Nwazota, "The Federal Role in Education Before No Child Left Behind," PBS: The Online News Hour, August 21, 2005. Referenced at: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/education/no_child/before.html
Diane Rufino,
"'Common Core or 'Rotten to the Core' - You Decide," For Love of God and Country, May 11, 2013. Referenced at: www.forloveofgodandcountry.com
Top Ten Scariest People in Education Reform." http://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/top-ten-scariest-people-in-education-reform-9-david-coleman/
Wikipedia (for a detailed look at the standards and examples) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core_State_Standards_Initiative
Publisher's note: Diane Rufino has her own blog, For Love of God and Country.
Come and visit her. She'd love your company.
