As mentioned often herein, Common Core does not live up to its potential. In fact, it downgrades our entire educational system to its lowest common denominator. But even more so, it permanently shuts the door for any poor, minority, middle class child from ever achieving a good paying job in the fields of science and math, and leaves those jobs for those who come from white, wealthy schools taught by white wealthy teachers...
Below is a worthy goal and one many of us, including one Diane Ravitch, originally thought we could achieve it by starting down this path.....
Our goal: was to meet the education needs of all students, including our more advanced students who need quality high-school courses in subjects like trigonometry, pre-calculus, chemistry and physics.
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- That is not what Common Core does.
While we didn't expect every student would take those more advanced courses, we did want students in every school to have those options available. We adopted this goal, in part, to help all Americans compete in a global economy and to give our kids the tools they need to realize all their dreams.
- That is not what Common Core does:
These new standards essentially omit all of the last two years of high school math and science needed to go on to more competitive colleges and STEM careers.
Get that? They ELIMINATE those courses most of US took back in the day which allowed some of us to excel at the Harvards, Yales, Princetons, Berkleys, and Oberlins, across this great nation.... Common Core completely removes all of that from the curriculum... Common core does not even attempt to cover Algebra II... where most of us first grasped the seeds of logical thought....
- What Common Core does do, is:
Common Core creates a highly inequitable situation where students from better-equipped high schools, like the renowned Charter School in Wilmington, are the only ones who have a clear advantage because those schools will teach well beyond the Common Core.
Meanwhile, students from less advantaged areas
would have no option to go on to a math-and-science based career because there simply were no standards requiring their school to offer such higher-level high-school courses.
It discriminates against less affluent kids since they depend on public schools to offer what they need, while kids from wealthier families will have the means to purchase private tutoring to meet their needs.
SO WE SHOULD CHANGE COMMON CORE!
Sigh. But we can't. These standards, created by private groups in Washington, DC, are copyrighted by those groups.
Those groups funded by the Gates Foundation have total control over Common Core.
Whether intended or not, Common Core will return America to the 19th Century... There will be two subclasses of people... One representing the Carnegies, Rockerfellers, Vanderbilts, and JP Morgan's, versus everyone else.. Before public schools became funded by their communities, education in advanced fields was limited only to those who could afford private tutors or a private school... No one born of working parents, rarely learned to read, or do math, until we began our program of educating everyone in public schools. Yet all were born of equal brain capacity at birth to have become anything they could have chosen to be.
Sadly, the tremendous investments by The Gates Foundation are returning us to that scenario.
If Common Core does go forward, we will again have two classes of Americans... Those who could pass the national test; and those who could not... This allows someone to control who enters the top echelon, by controlling what gets put on the test... Very similar to how blacks were kept from voting in the Reconstructionist South, by means of literacy tests at all polls down there. If you "think like Whitey" and "talk like Whitey", you can enter this world of opportunity (as one potential example). Otherwise, go sweep our streets for minimum wage.
If we are really going to do what our dream requires, this leaves us no option, but to drop the Core and move on to a more equitable and complete standards system — a system that gives a talented but financially challenged urban American student the same opportunities enjoyed right now by kids in more affluent parts of the state.
But in Delaware, at least, we can't drop Common Core....Why? Because of the corporate buyout of Dave Sokola. Because of the cowardliness of one corrupted Pete Schwartzkoph who refuses to allow any legislation to go forward which modifies it. Because of the
toadiness of Greg Lavelle, most particularly who despite having an exceptional child himself, was bribed with an appearance on Chuck Todd's show and then flipped his vote to NOT protect children from this test, and doom all of our state's children to its horrible side effects.
We the People's line of defense has crumbled before the promises of lucrative future salaries to begotten somewhere in the corporate educational field soon after finishing their stints in office.... Therefore it is now solely up to us, We the People.
By not having children take the Smarter Balanced test, none of the harmful side effects will be experienced... This is truly something best expressed by Nancy Reagan of many years back... "Just say no". (Implying that by avoiding the test, you avoid all the subsequent problems that come with it, as with "drugs".)
Opt out your child, by keeping him home from school on those days your school will be testing them.... You will not harm him one iota. He will miss nothing, and you will defeat this segregationist policy being created, fanned, and propagated by billions of top-down dollars, from going forward....
This
IS the civil rights issue of our time... This
IS, the prime economic issue of our time... This
IS, an attempt to wipe out years of having every man be created equal.... This
IS, an attack on the America we grew up under; This
IS, an attack on the America as we know it; This
IS, an attack on the America we want to be....
Right now, America really needs you to opt out your child.