#2 Common Core Fake Standards
By January 2015, almost half of all Americans had heard the innocent sounding slogan of how Common Core State Standards (CCSS) will prepare our kids to be “career and college ready.” In this chapter, we will explain that CCSS has nothing to do with improving State Standards or getting kids career and college ready. CCSS is simply a corporate corruption sucker scam secretly funded by billionaires to rob tax payers of billions of dollars and rob children of their future. This second chapter is divided into four sections: 2.1 The Real History of Common Core2.2 Common Core Standards are Not Age Appropriate2.3 Common Core Math is Insane2.4 Support for Common Core Plunges
We will begin by reviewing the hidden history of Common Core. We will then explain how allowing this private corporate takeover of our public schools harms our kids. Third, we will lift the curtain on Common Core to expose how it not intended to get kids career or college ready. Instead, it is part of a plan to destroy our public schools so that they can be taken over by billionaires. Finally, we will look at how and why Common Core tests are designed to fail as many students as possible.
What is Common Core... Myth versus FactCommon Core is often written by its initials CCSS which stands for Common Core State Standards. The idea of national standards may seem like a good idea. Unfortunately, these national standards have turned into a nightmare for students, parents and teachers. The marketing myth or slogan factory for Common Core is that CCSS is a set of “State led national standards which prepare students to be career and college ready.” In fact, Common Core is Gates led not State led. The standards were hastily written by a few corporate consultants – not by teachers or child development specialists. The Common Core standards were so poorly written that they have been condemned by many educational professionals as being not as good as the prior State standards that CCSS replaced. This is a problem because Common Core standards are patented and do not allow for more than minor changes.
Worst of all, Common Core Standards do not prepare students for college or careers. For example, even if a student passed all of the math standards by completing the fake common core tests, they would not be ready to take college level courses. Nor would they be ready to get a good paying job. So the whole Common Core program is nothing but a scam based on a series of lies. The real purpose of Common Core is first to create billions of dollars in profit for the Education Industrial Complex and then second to destroy public schools and public school students to such an extent that the general public will demand that public schools be closed and replaced with private for profit schools that are exempt from the Common Core standards.
The Real Reason for Common Core is to give Billionaires another weapon to Destroy our Public SchoolsDespite the fact that Common Core is now the official education standard for more than 40 States – and has been since 2010 - a 2013 Gallop Poll found that more than 60% of all Americans had “never heard of the Common Core standards”. This is still true today. Fewer than half of all Americans have any idea what Common Core standards mean or how they might adversely affect their children. Even those who support Common Core typically have no idea what Common Core is, how it evolved, what its drawbacks are, how much it will cost or what effect it will have on our kids and our public schools. Common Core based testing began in 25 states in 2014 (including most school districts in Washington State). Nearly every state and school district will be subjected to Common Core in 2015. Now is the time for anyone who cares about the future of our children and our nation to become better informed about Common Core. In this article, we will look at one of the chief drawbacks of Common Core, the fact that the standards ignored 100 years of research on child development.
One Common Core Standard to Rule Them All... A Single National Curriculum and an Unfair National Test
Any child who does not pass this test is a branded a failure and so is his teacher and so is his school.
The marketing claim used to promote Common Core is that there should be one rigid set of national education standards determined by a few billionaires as being what is needed to prepare every student to be “career and college ready.” Common Core is a “one size fits all” approach to education that makes about as much sense as offering shoes that comes only in Size 11. It does not matter how well the shoe is designed. No size 11 shoe will fit every foot. No national standard will fit every State, every school and every student. But the fact that it is an obviously bad idea is not relevant to the corporate raiders. The real point of Common Core is that it can be used to introduce new and more difficult Common Core tests. What is very difficult for many of us to understand is that the Common Core tests are not related to Common Core standards. So Common Core standards are LESS complete than prior standards and yet at the same time Common Core tests are much harder than prior tests. Hang in there for a few minutes and we will explain this apparent contradiction.
As many parents and teachers have discovered, the new Common Core math standards and curriculum are often quite different from prior math standards and curriculum. For example, the following is a new math instructional method for elementary schools based on the Common Core Elementary School Math Standards:
This new math method is based on something called set theory which is used a lot with Computer Programming. Sets are any group of numbers... for example, even numbers are one set of numbers and odd numbers are another set of numbers. Any group of numbers can be a set and you can define a series of any operations for any set of numbers. This process is also called Number Transformation. For example, understanding that the number 8 can also be expressed as “10 minus 2. The problem with math transformations is that they are abstract and beyond the cognitive development of young children. Here is an example of Common Core Math Transformation
Question #8: Tell how to make 10 when adding 8 + 5:
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So far, we have shown that the Common Core standards, curriculum and high stakes tests are a mess. They were written in secret by a small group of people with no background in education and then forced on States who were desperate to get billions of dollars in “Race to the Top” federal funding. Common Core has been corrupted by political manipulation, corporate profiteering and an unfair scoring system designed to ensure that two out of three children will fail the new high stakes tests they will be forced to take in 2015. Currently young children in over half of the States are being subjected to Common Core standards and curriculum. In the Spring of 2015, more than 30 million children will be subjected to the Common Core tests (SBAC and PARCC). Thus, in 2015, more than 20 million children will be severely and permanently harmed by being unfairly labeled as “failures.” This will go down as one of the worst crimes against children in history.
Despite the horrific nature of this crime against our children, a June 2014 Poll showed that nearly half of all Americans have never even heard of Common Core. Only one in four Americans said that they had heard “a lot” about it. http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/A_Politics/14463%20JUNE%20NBC-WSJ%20Poll%20%286-18%20Release%29.pdfEven those one in four Americans that have heard a lot about Common Core have been badly misinformed about them thanks to a multibillion dollar mass media propaganda campaign paid for by Bill Gates. This misinformation campaign includes a series of “push polls” that have made false statements about Common Core in order to drum up support for Common Core. For example, the poll taken in June 2014 included this misleading question: “Just to make sure that everyone has the same information, let me describe the Common Core standards in a bit more detail. The Common Core standards are a new set of education standards for English and math that have been set to internationally competitive levels and would be used in every state for students in grades K through 12. Based on this information, do you support or oppose the adoption and implementation of the Common Core standards in your state?”The above statement is simply a lie. The Common Core standards have NOT been set to internationally competitive standards. No other nation on earth uses standards so high that two thirds of their students are unable to achieve the standards! Despite this obvious attempt to manipulate the public, only one in four people said they “strongly supported” Common Core. One in four strongly oppose it and the remaining half have yet to make up their minds. As is typical of most polls, the average respondent was much more wealthy that the average American with an annual family income of $50,000 to $75,000. Only one in four of the respondents had a child living in their household.
Thankfully, despite all the lies, deceptions, misinformation and push polls, resistance to Common Core standards, Common Core curriculum and Common Core testing by parents and teachers is growing. Despite the fact that we are going up against the richest and most powerful people in the world, who have used four billion dollars in “Race to the Top” blackmail money to corrupt education in 45 States, there are several reasons to believe that parents and teachers are beginning to wake up to the threats facing our kids and our schools.