It’s Now Official; Under Markell’s Policies, Education Quality Slid Backwards

Courtesy of Education Weekly

Click Image to enlarge and you will see that Delaware is one island of orange in a sea of green.  Our neighbors by dragging their feet on educational reform and slowing the advent of Common Core, were able to stem the tide better than us, who against all expert opinion rushed headfirst into Common Core curriculum and it has cost us.

Name one family of executives who looking at this map, would still want to settle in Delaware?  In Cecil County? Maybe. In Salem County? Maybe.  In Chester County?  Maybe… But certainly not any of Delaware’s three counties unless only it was absolutely necessary.

This downward slide was predicted and is now upon us.  Notice Kentucky, which rushed into Common Core.  Notice Tennessee, the other Race To The Top Winner.  Notice Florida, which is undergoing Jeb Bush’s reforms.

Compare that to states that did not jump on Common Core.  Wyoming. Minnesota, Vermont, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Connecticut…

If you want exact proof that Common Core is the sole reason that the slippage occurred, notice Rhode Island, once green is now, like Delaware… orange… Both state’s secretaries sat on the board of Chiefs for Change… Both were gung-ho in their implementation of Common Core.

These are the real results.  These are not speculation.  Common Core is destroying the very fabric of education… states following it are crashing and burning; states that said “no thank you, we’ll see how it works first”, are doing just fine…

This is Sokola’s and Jacques’ fault.  The governor often criticized, is just an enabler.  These two wrote the legislation that pulled the rugs out from underneath Delaware’s parents. Delaware’s teachers, and Delaware’s schools… Those two individuals, are responsible for the entire slide of Delaware’s educational excellence shown on this map…

To get ourselves back in line with our peers we need to do the following.

• Eliminate the Smarter Balanced Assessment.
• Eliminate all Common Core Curriculum attachments
• Eliminate Dave Sokola and Earl Jacques in 2016.

“As You Grow Up In This World, You Realize People Really Don’t Give A Fu<k About What You Feel Or What You Think.” — David Coleman Prime Architect of Common Core Standards

Photo Courtesy of usslave.blogspot.com

Really?  That is all you see life as? Pathetic? That isn’t how my world is.  Everyone I know seems damn well interested in what I have to say… And I am interested in what they have to say!..  And those few times in my world when I stop being the center of conversation, everyone is suddenly interested in what everyone else has to say. Even children are interested in what other people have to say… So much so, that if alone in a quiet house, they turn on the TV to have talk in their world, or radio, or MP3’s… We seem to be a society that is abounding with curiosity, and with social media on  today’s technology, we can quickly be overwhelmed with what everyone has to say.  Often we place far too much importance on what for example, celebrities have to say even though they are not experts on anything in particular.  But we are still very interested in what they have to say….

Because that is how we were taught… to seek, to explore, to wonder, to discover and tell.

Now to tell the truth, in my life I have occasionally come across a few people who are not interested in what I have to say… Like the gruff guard on the border of the old Soviet Union, or that old bastard of a boss who was soon replaced because he was unproductive, or an occasional blind date in a hot pick up bar….  We have a word for people like that in the English language:  a$$h0le.   Someone who doesn’t care about your concerns or interests, and is only concerned with how you fit into THEIR life, is among many other names, the proper definition of an a$$h0le…

Common Core is designed to make our children:  a$$h0les….  And I have a problem with that… The evidence can be found in their English language standards, particularly in regards to poetry.

By now you may have already heard the think tank which is against Common Core, based in Massachusetts, a state which for monetary reasons, HAD to accept Common Core, even though its state standards were far superior to the dinky national ones being force upon it.  Therefore one can trust this think tank.

Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research recently published their study The Dying Light; How Common Core Damages Poetry Instruction….   it pretty well demolishes any notion of reading poetry to text.  And it then points us to discus whether or not we want to give up on reading poetry just as we gave up on writing cursive; because the one person in charge,  turly believes no one should care what we think, …or feel.   What a sad life he must live.

Yes. There are some people who flat out don’t get poetry.  I knew some in college.  They are just missing that gene. and get it, they never will…  Unfortunately by multiple  circumstances we got one of them as the architect of our English Language Arts Common Core  standards…

In words better than mine, here is what the Pioneer Institute has to say about this a$$h0le’s vision of future poetry instruction…..

“The Common Core English language arts
standards were intended to apply to all
students indiscriminately to ensure that they
would become efficient workers in a “global
economy.” In other words, the aim is precisely
the reverse of that to which the old proponents
of a humane education were committed.

Those proponents knew well that common
workers would have little opportunity from
day to day to encounter the great works
of human art and thought. They therefore
sought to give them what they could, when

they could – in school. The aim was to raise
and ennoble them, to give them some of what
their more fortunate neighbors would enjoy.
But the aim here is to depress and level, not
to ennoble. It is to make proletarians of us all.

 THE ROLE OF COMMON CORE IS TO DEPRESS AND LEVEL, NOT TO ENNOBLE.

The question I ask every parent…. is do you want your child depresssed and leveled?  Or do you want him ennobled… ?  Speaking for myself, I emphatically want mine ennobled.  Is that normal? It sure seems like it to me.  I’d much rather my children have the tools to soar if the opportunity ever comes their way, instead of being North Koreanized, and being culled and punished every time one doesn’t fit in with what the ruler thinks one should do.  Remember the 2nd-in-command of North Korea who was publicly tried and executed  for not showing enough enthusiasm when the supreme leader was making a speech?  Common Core should be the national religion of North Korea.

This is why parents are fighting Common Core.  One has to wonder what the underlying  sinister motives are of those who are now doubling down, to push it against a massive outbreak of resistance….   Because it is just too bizarre to assume all the pieces came together in this exact sinister fashion by accident.

A.  Let us look at some of the supporters of Common Core and see if we can see any motives as to why they would like our students to grow up subservient and obsequious, and chose never to stand up for their rights or any rights of others being harmed….

Exxon Mobile — yes

Wall Street — yes

Murdoch — yes

Bill Gates — yes

Eli Broad — yes

Walmart — yes

Rodel — yes

Jeb Bush  — yes

Jack Markell — yes

Mark Murphy — yes

Dave Sokola — yes

Pete Schwartzkoph — yes

Valerie Longhurst — yes

Darryl Scott — yes

Can anyone else see in a single glance how all “it’s my way or the highway” these personalities are?

B.  Now let us look at some names of those opposing this type of Common Core going forward…

John Kowalko

Charles Potter

Paul Baumbach

Ed Osienski

Kim Williams

Nicole Poore

John Young

Kilroy

Freeman Williams

And the school boards of the following (all 19)  Delaware School Districts

Appoquinimink

Brandywine

Caesar Rodney

Cape Henlopen

Capital

Christina

Colonial

Delmar

Indian River

Lake Forest

Laurel

Milford

NCC Votech

POLYTECH

Red Clay

Seaford

Smyrna

Sussex Tech

Woodbridge

All of these are good people, and groups of good people, who feel the individual in the child is far, far more important than the cookie cutter cardboard cutouts that Common Core tries to create.   Common Core is to these who know their classic Greek history,  the Spartification of Athens.   Those being oppressed by  Common Core are the Athenians, the prosperous life-loving defenders of democracy. Those in favor of Common Core are the Spartans, whose authoritarian belief is to take all life and with rigor, forcefully mold it into their own image.  And so, today we are re-fighting the Peloponnesian War right here inside our children’s heads, teacher’s classrooms, the halls of the General Assembly, and here on these pages.

The Common Core standards owe their existence to one thing:  the appeal of a “simple master concept”: Everyone should be an employee.

But wait!  I don’t want my child to just be an employee.  I what them to not only  know enough to be their own boss, but have the confidence to go forward and do it… Therefore  I want them to experience the joys of dreaming, to allow thoughts to wander, to ponder new ideas and new concepts.  I want my child to be smart; not dumb, and Common Core is by design, there to make them dumb…(Do this task this way and no way else).  In its substance and its structure alike, Common Core does not educate students to be their own bosses, their own ideas’ festivals, or their own masters.

Instead, it teaches them that the purpose of all human effort is to define their place on some universal yardstick, and that only this universal yardstick is the legitimate, authoritative tool for determining ones place on the universal team.

Our children are better than that; your children are better than that; every child is better than that.

Common Core has got to go.

The easiest way to do so,is to introduce legislation keeping the old state tests intact for a couple years, until we can redo Common Core into an America Curriculum, not a David Coleman one. His is just too weird.

A world where no one cares what my child thinks?  What my child feels?  And he IS serious?….

What a horrible future.  What a terrible waste of a life on this planet.  This Common Core is nothing but teaching your children as they did to the Negro children being brought up in the old South:  Your a slave, you got no choice, so learn to love it….

Common Core Has Got To Go.

 

 

 

If Passing This Meant You Could Graduate, Would You Graduate?

This was lifted from the Smart Balance test given in the eleventh grade. An example of why scores will be low. Please tell me what occupation this problem would be involved within? Please tell me what college remedial math class would ever have to cover this topic?

Common Core and the higher standards are nothing but irresponsible intellectual buffoonery. This is nothing but a dork playing around and saying, … how difficult can i make a question so everybody fails?

And if everyone fails something no body ever needs, are we hurt by it? Yes, if you are the teacher….

Common Core is an embarrassment to human creativity and intellect. Opt out now, even if it “supposedly” impossible to do… Get sick that week and get doctor’s orders requiring your child to recuperate only in Jamaica. And don’t forget to bring back duty free rum….

At least someone gets something good out of Common Core.