Common Core’s Control over Curriculum, Teachers, Students, America

students_teacher_AP

By Donna Garner

9.2.14

[The Obama administration, Arne Duncan, and the U. S. Dept. of Ed. are beginning to run scared because the public, including a number of our nation’s governors, are realizing that Common Core Standards do indeed control curriculum (among other education functions that have been ripped away by the federal government from state and/or local control).

Because the USDOE is “banned by law from directing, supervising, or controlling elementary and secondary school curriculum, programs of instruction, and instructional materials,” governors and other citizens are realizing they have grounds to sue the federal government for breaking the law.

Below are helpful resources that prove Common Core Standards are controlling curriculum. These resources could be used to help strengthen people’s legal challenges to reject the entire Common Core Standards Initiative and the USDOE’s conditional NCLB waiver system.

— Donna Garner]

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[The arrows mean “lead(s) to.”]

National standards →  National assessments →  National curriculum → National teacher evaluations with teachers’ salaries tied to students’ test scores → Teachers teaching to the test each and every day → National indoctrination of our public school children →  National database of students and teachers containing personally intrusive information

*I began sharing this graphic way back in 1.1.09 in an attempt to warn the public against the Obama administration’s move toward the Common Core Standards Initiative. – Donna Garner

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4.16.14 – “Common Core Is a Curriculum” – by Donna Garner —http://www.educationviews.org/common-core-curriculum/

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Laura Slover, CEO of PARCC admitted in a press release on 8.22.14 that Common Core drives the curriculum: 

 

“High quality assessments go hand-in-hand with high quality instruction based, on high quality standardsYou cannot have one without the other. The PARCC states see quality assessments as a part of instruction, not a break from instruction.”http://www.parcconline.org/parcc-states-reduce-no-items-elaliteracy-portion-test

 

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Gov. Bobby Jindal’s press release – 8.25.14:

 

The proponents of Common Core and PARCC continue to insist that tests and standards are not about curriculum, but that’s a ruse. Teachers already know that what is tested at the end of the year is what is taught in classrooms throughout the year. PARCC may not mandate one textbook or one pacing guide, but the CEO of the federally funded PARCC has admitted one thing: PARCC controls instruction and instruction is curriculum. (8.25.14 – “PARCC CEO Admits Goal of Test To Control Curriculum” – Office of Gov. Bobby Jindal – Press Release — http://gov.louisiana.gov/index.cfm?md=newsroom&tmp=detail&articleID=4655 )

 

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2.12 — “The Road to a National Curriculum: The Legal Aspects of the Common Core Standards, Race to the Top, and Conditional Waivers” – a Pioneer Institute White Paper — http://www.scribd.com/doc/81315338/The-Road-to-a-National-Curriculum

 

[Summary statements about this report]

 

With only minor exceptions, the General Education Provisions Act, the Department of Education Organization Act, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), ban the Department from directing, supervising, or controlling elementary and secondary school curriculum, programs of instruction, and instructional materials.

The U. S. Dept. of Education has designed a system of discretionary grants and conditional waivers that effectively herds states into accepting specific standards and assessments favored by the Departmentthe NCLB conditional waiver programis driving the states toward a national K-12 curriculum and course content.  

 

The waiver authority granted by Congress in No Child Left Behind does not permit the Secretary to gut NCLB wholesale and impose these conditions…

 

In the view of the authors, these efforts will necessarily result in ade facto national curriculum and instructional materials effectively supervised, directed, or controlled by the Department through the NCLB waiver process.

Secretary Arne Duncan has said that the work of the two consortia includes “developing curriculum frameworks” and ‘instructional modules.’

But the legal concern is that these federally funded assessments will ultimately direct the course of elementary and secondary course content across the nationThis raises a fundamental question of whether the Department is exceeding its statutory boundaries…

 

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8.22.14 – “Federalizing Education by Waiver?” by Derek W. Black, University of South Carolina, School of Law, Vanderbilt Law Review, Forthcoming —http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2485407

Abstract:

In the fall of 2012, the United States Secretary of Education told states he would use his statutory power to waive violations of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), but only on the condition that they adopt his new education policies — policies that had already failed in Congress. Most states had no real choice but to agree because eighty percent of their schools were faced with statutory sanctions and fund termination.

 

As a result, the Secretary was able to federalize two core aspects of public education over the next year. For the first time, school curriculum and the terms of teacher evaluation and retention came under the control of the federal government. 

This Article demonstrates that this particular exercise of conditional waiver power was both unconstitutional and beyond the scope of the Secretary’s statutory authority.

 

First, NCLB contained no notice that states might face waiver conditions when they first agreed to participate in NCLB, much less notice of the substance of those conditions. Spending clause doctrine requires both.

 

Second, states’ inability to say no to these conditions raises serious questions of unconstitutional coercion.

 

Third, the Secretary lacked explicit statutory authority to impose these conditions. At best, NCLB implies authority to condition waivers, but implied conditions would be limited to the scope of NCLB itself. The waiver conditions the Secretary imposed go well beyond the scope of NCLB.

 

Fourth, to treat these particular waiver conditions as falling within the scope of the Secretary’s authority would be to extend the Secretary the equivalent of law-making power, which separation of powers doctrines prohibit. The power to unilaterally impose open-ended policy through waiver conditions would be remarkable not just for its transformation of key aspects of education, but for the entire federal administrative state. It would open the door to the spread of a more expansive administrative power than ever seen before.

 

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2.11.12 – “Common Core Standards: Is the U. S. Dept. of Ed. Violating Federal Law by Directing Standards, Tests, Curricula?” – Truth in American Education —

http://truthinamericaneducation.com/common-core-state-standards/is-the-u-s-dept-of-education-violating-federal-law-by-directing-standards-tests-curricula/

 

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8.25.14 — “Common Core PARCC CEO Acknowledges Goal of Assessments To Drive Curriculum” — by Dr. Susan Berry – Breitbart http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/08/25/Common-Core-PARCC-CEO-Acknowledges-Goal-of-Assessments-To-Drive-Curriculum

 

 

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About Alice

Alice Linahan is a Politically-Active Texas Mom who has worked hard in the trenches of the Grassroots Movement. As an established leader in New Media with Voices Empower and as Vice President of Women on the Wall, Alice brings audiences a servant’s voice with a heartfelt, funny tone and when the truth needs to be told in a bold, fresh manner Alice can deliver. She brings alive the stories from the trenches of the movement of parents asking… #CANiSEE what you are teaching my child that is taking America by storm. Alice is a radio talk show host of the Women On the Wall Radio Show in addition to being the Author of the upcoming “A parents journey from #CANiSEE™© to I Can SEE” study on the Common Core. Alice Linahan is a winner of the 2014 UPTON SINCLAIR AWARD with EducationViews.org for her work as an Advocate for Securing the Best of Education Policies for the next generation of American children. Alice has been described as “Passionate in everything she does and she is proof that one person can make a difference.

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