THE COMMON CORE FACE-OFF: HIDING THE TRUTH ABOUT CHOICE & CHARTER
SCHOOLS
PART 2 of 2
By
Anita Hoge
July 1, 2014
NewsWithViews.com
Here is the Set-up
Lets say the Re-authorization of ESEA is passed with the “choice” amendments. Your child has already been identified by the national database through the state longitudinal data system. Your child has been identified for funding under Title I because of the Flex Waiver. Now, with this “choice” the Title I funds will " follow" your child to whichever school you choose.
Here is an example of what can happen once your child has the “choice” funds in his/her backpack, with their name allotted to the scholarship, and you (the parent) decide to use this "choice" funding to send your child to Immaculate Conception Catholic School in Washington, Pennsylvania. This school will be mandated by federal law to comply with ESEA, better known as Common Core. This will be disguised as academic standards or College and Career Ready Standards (CCRS). Under this sort of “choice,” there can be no discrimination for this Catholic school to turn down a student. [NOTE: This changes the hope that a private school can bypass this issue by just refusing federal funding. The private school must refuse the child. This is where discrimination comes into play.] So, Immaculate Conception must enroll your child. This would be the same for any private school or religious school.
Immaculate Conception will be mandated to administer the federal test. This national test will also evaluate the teachers. If Immaculate Conception School is not teaching Common Core, they will be targeted as a priority or focus school to be brought into compliance with the law. This will be the demise of “private" in your group of "choice" schools. This will be the end of truly private education in America, because your private or religious school just became a government school—it must use the standards passed in your state (Common Core warmed over), and take the assessment aligned to the national curriculum and national test. All schools become government schools with “choice.”
Is This the End of Public Schools?
Now, what happens to the old public school that your child just left? Your old public school will struggle. Your local district must pay for at least 50% of your child’s stipend or scholarship with taxes collected locally so that your child can go to another school. Your federal Title I “Choice” fund pays the other 50%. Your public school loses 100% of funding for every student who leaves to go to a "choice" school. Your public school system locally will collapse, because there will not be enough money in the budget to support your community’s school. Plus, your tax money will be following students everywhere, even across state lines.
Your locally elected school directors will be fired or retired. What happens to "voting" for locally elected representatives? What happens to your tax base, to property taxes that were collected to run your neighborhood school? Where will property taxes go if there are no public schools? What happens to wealthier districts if funding for students becomes equalized? This is the "punch in the gut" that Secretary Duncan was talking about when he chastised soccer moms that were against Common Core.
Meanwhile, everyone is fiddling around with Common Core, states are taking the caps off the number of charter schools, expanding them, closing down public schools, and sometimes transforming a public school into a charter school. Parent trigger bills are allowing parents to set up charter schools. Charter schools are not private schools. Charters are public schools. They have with no elected boards, but they do have access to public funds.
A June 24, 2014 article in the Detroit Free Press explains the powerless authority of a Charter School Board when told, "none of the board’s business" as to how the school was run.
"In its investigation into how Michigan’s charter schools perform and spend nearly $1 billion a year in taxpayer dollars, the Free Press found board members who were kept clueless by their management companies about school budgets or threatened and removed by a school’s authorizer when they tried to exercise the responsibilities that come with their oath of office. Board members removed by an authorizer have no recourse in Michigan."
“There have been board members who have basically said, ‘We tried to make changes, we tried to instill our rights as board members overseeing a public school’ and were essentially told to back off,” said Casandra Ulbrich, vice president of the state Board of Education, which sets education policy and advises lawmakers. “You have to question who’s really running the show here because technically and legally, it’s supposed to be the board.” In traditional school districts, with elected boards, members can’t be removed for asking tough questions. Voters get to decide whether to re-elect a board member." [emphases mine]
By supporting the Common Core agenda you have just agreed to diminish our American representative form of government by supporting “choice” and charter schools. Taxation without representation. Will taxes be centralized or regionalized toward a central base? Will the people have any power or voice to change this system?
So, think again. "What is your choice?" Charter schools, private schools, religious schools, and remaining public schools—all conforming to the ESEA federal law with Common Core embedded in the standards. Your state will continue to reduce caps on charter schools, and some public schools will become community “hub centers” or school-based clinics. And lest you forget, SB 1094 also changed the definition of a “Family Member.” You, the parent are demoted to a “partner” who is responsible for your child along with many "other" government officials. Please do an Internet search for the definition of partnership. You won't like it when the government takes away your authority as a parent, your voice and your representative voting power is lost forever and your child belongs to the state, with reduced in authority to “partner.” And if your child moves to another city or state to go to a school more suited to his/her abilities and can produce more “human capital” from your child, who will “partner” with him/her there?
Will these ‘Conservative’ groups and Obama give you the straight talk about ESEA and ESEA Flexibility Waivers? Will they tell you the truth about what will happen to your private, Catholic, or Christian school with federal “choice”? No! They are NOT talking about it! They continue to insist that “choice” is the answer. Keep in mind that there is a profit motive for many of these groups to continue to advocate this phony “choice.”
What Will Happen if the U.S. Department of Education is Abolished?
So, what about abolishing the U.S. Department of Education? Watch the switcheroo!
Who better to monitor human capital than the U.S. Department of Labor? Plus, another aspect of SB 1094 (Re-authorization of ESEA) is that they want a national assessment board that monitors compliance to the national test, most likely the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Well, this "appointed" commission was the plan all along, too.
The Gordon Commission has already been set up by Obama and the Educational Testing Service (ETS),the contractor for NAEP, which calls for an unelected board to manage the national test. Want to talk about top down control? Why not just use the U.S. Department of Labor to monitor the “human capital” (your child’s economic value to the state) that is being processed by all schools in America? The national testing, along with the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES), will monitor compliance from the national database on ALL aspects of education.
Who needs the U.S. Department of Education? Who needs state control of funding when Title I federal funds "follow the child" and do NOT pass through state government? Who needs locally elected school boards when public schools fail?
CEO Reed Hastings of Netflix, who is a big charter school supporter and an investor in the Rocketship Education charter school network, agrees. His big idea is to "kill" elected school boards. "At a meeting of the California Charter Schools Association on March 4, he said in a keynote speech that the problem with public schools is that they are governed by elected local school boards."
Effectively, this charter school system destroys representative government.
Why the System Needs Traditional Teachers Out of the Way
Traditional teachers must be gotten rid of. The Vergara case in Los Angeles ruled teacher tenure unconstitutional, and it serves as the precedent doing away with teacher tenure. Soon you will see lawsuits erupting all over the country against teacher tenure with the Obama gang members presiding.
Teachers unions are girding for a tough fight to defend tenure laws against a coming blitz of lawsuits — and an all-out public relations campaign led by former aides to President Barack Obama.
But, wait a minute! Wasn't that the so-called ‘conservative’ FreedomWorks agenda? So, now you know the rest of the story. Who is on whose side?
Teachers will be manipulated to leave the education system through the Value-Added Measurement Model (VAMM) incorporated into the ESEA Fexibility Waiver. Teachers will be evaluated by how their students score on the national test. Teachers MUST teach to the test, and must be evaluated with the Charlotte Danielson Evaluation, spelled out in the Flex Waivers. [NOTE: Charlotte Danielson was an official with the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory during development of the original Course Goals Collection, the forerunner of Outcome-Based Education and the Common Core.] All curriculum used will be developed with total alignment to the standards aligned system (SAS), which matches curriculum, teaching, and testing to the standards. Teachers must perform and teach the standards, period.
Removing teacher tenure easily allows traditional teachers who know what is best for children, to be replaced if they do not conform to the Common Core agenda. The Fexibility Waiver is very clear about replacing the principals and the teachers not in compliance. Young, inexperienced Teach For America members are standing on the sidelines ready to jump at the chance to replace traditional teachers. Eager and committed, they will comply with the plan.
All barriers are now removed for federal takeover.
A Little Background on Choice
When the controversy exploded in the 1990's over Outcome Based Education (OBE), the education bureaucrats did not expect the explosion of fury from parents against OBE and the subjective learning outcomes that were trying to be placed in every state at that time. OBE failed. The bureaucrats have gotten smarter, but very little else has changed.
Copyright the standards, call them academic, and align them to “Race to the Top” funds so every state could be the same. Change Title I in ESEA for every child to be funded the same, equity in education. Test every child to see where their weaknesses are in meeting standards that were expanded to values and attitudes. Then use Special Ed funds for remediation or intervention to meet those standards. Monitor and force teachers to teach the standards, and implement choice to throw the net over everyone. Here was the sentiment then, as it is now:
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“TO OBE OR NOT TO OBE?” WAS THE QUESTION POSED BY MARJORIE LEDELL, ASSOCIATE of William Spady’s in his High Success Network in her article for Educational Leadership’s January 1994 issue. On page 18 of her article we read the following:
Finally,
raise the real issue and depend on democracy. Don’t let “to
OBE
(common core) or Not to OBE (common core)”
or “to implement or not implement efforts to improve student learning”
cloud the overdue national debate about whether public education
should exist or be replaced with publicly funded private education.
[Emphasis added. OBE quote taken from the deliberate dumbing down of america. By Charlotte T. Iserbyt.]
Sorry, FreedomWorks. Freedom doesn't work this way.
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