The Mess Called Common Core

I was skeptical at first. As a 25-year retired educator I understand how things work on the inside and saw flaws in peoples’ arguments against it – or so I thought. I attended a Common Core Unveiled meeting that gave me evidence of a problem that far surpassed my skepticism, so I began to investigate further. There are several components to Common Core, and they all raise alarm.

First is the standards themselves. Have you ever heard of the ‘dumbing-down’ of America? I have figured one part of how they are accomplishing that. We were sold a philosophy with Everyday Math that I see in the standards of Common Core. It is called ‘spiraling’ and it replaces ‘mastery’ in education. With ‘mastery’ you master certain basic concepts before moving on to more complicated ones. With ‘spiraling’ you are hit with a tiny bit of many concepts every year in the hopes you will ‘catch on’ sooner or later. I saw first hand that it doesn’t work.

Many communities are sounding an alarm about Common Core textbooks incorporating a variety of curriculum that indoctrinates children in such areas as sexuality, homosexuality, and Islam. It is a little long, but I urge you to watch the Common Core video here:

Problems I see with Adaptive Testing are validity, violation of privacy, and potential for outright brainwashing. Districts ahead of us with testing say their length, difficulty, and inappropriate content are major issues. One aspect of Adaptive Testing is the ability to change questions on the tests so that one student/community is given more difficult test questions than another. You might question my brainwashing statement, but ‘forced compliance’ is nothing less than that. Student privacy is violated with the contract that our state DEED signed requiring testing data is shared with the federal DOE, and other ‘end users’.

Data Mining is here, and student testing is one component that those who compile data are looking forward to incorporating into their businesses to share or sell worldwide. We live in a glass bowl – especially if you talk on a phone, use a computer, use the internet, or have email. Did you know they are using our PFD information to identify Alaskans for their database?

Then there is the deception by our State DEED Commissioner regarding Alaska Standards that he claims publicly are not Common Core, but privately are Common Core.

Do you realize where this is headed? Federal control of education is merely a steppingstone toward UN control and world domination. They change the name every so often (right now it is called Common Core), but the goals are the same. How do you feel about that?

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Carol Carman is foremost a Christian, a 25-year retired educator, and secretary of Alaska Republican Assembly.

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