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Friday, April 25, 2014

STEVE CATES: WHO REALLY RUNS N.D. EDUCATION – IS COMMON CORE REALLY AN INCESTUOUS $$/POWER GRAB?

 

Who has the most effect on the education of North Dakota’s children? (a) Governor Dalrymple? (b) Department of Education Superintendent Kristen Baesler? (c) Your school board members? (d) The teachers? (e) None of the above.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are the vehicle used without your knowledge to put into motion a systemic state-wide education revolution. Adoption of the CCSS by North Dakota requires assessment alignment to the standards, curriculum alignment to the standards, technology alignment to the standards, instructional method aligned training, and all manner of requirements. Using money from the taxpayer of N.D. and a number of huge education service providers and who knows who else, an education change of a magnitude that you were never told about is in motion. Is this possible? Yes.

From a document distributed by the Bismarck School District, dated February 20, 2014:

“Who developed the Common Core?

The Common Core is a state-led, collaborative effort to raise the bar on English and math standards. It is a product of the Council of Chief State School Officers (the top education officers in each state) and National Governor’s Association, along with Achieve, a Washington-based nonprofit working to increase the number of students who graduate from high school ready for college and careers. Common Core is not a federal mandate”.

http://www.bismarck.k12.nd.us/uploads/resources/26263/common-core-info--faqs.pdf

The creation, adoption and implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) is by no means a “state-led, collaborative effort.” Let us consider what “state-led” means:

·         Two Washington D.C. based trade organizations, the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, education industry giant insiders, progressive/leftist philanthropies and some membership dues from N.D. Citizens are the source of the CCSS. Dues paid by states to NGA and CCSSO is $60,000 per year.

 

·         The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave prior to 2009 almost $150 million dollars to the four non-profits NGA, the CCSSO, CCSS “architect” David Coleman’s Student Achievement Partners (SAP), and Achieve, Inc. that have been credited with creation of the CCSS. [1]

 

 

·         The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave in excess of $27.7 million dollars to NGA, CCSSO, and Achieve, Inc. during 2009, 2010, and 2011. [2]

 

·         The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave in excess of $34.57 million dollars to NGA, CCSSO, and David Coleman’s SAP during 2011, 2012, and 2013.[3]

 

·         The progressive/leftist Carnegie Foundations gave a total of over $6.8 million dollars in grants to the NGA, CCSSO, and Achieve, Inc. between 2001 and 2014.[4]

 

·         The CCSS were created by a small secretive committee dominated by the education testing industry whom worked at the time for organizations that had received multiple millions of dollars of Gates Foundation grants.  These organizations have or are positioned to subsequently make millions of dollars as the result of the creation of the CCSS. All of those shown in the reference below are affiliated with Gates Foundation money (NGA, CCSSO, Achieve, Inc. America’s Choice, ACT, The College Board, and Student Achievement Partners).[5]

 

·         The National Center for Education and the Economy parent organization of America’s Choice and has for it’s President and CEO Marc S. Tucker. America’s Choice received over the period of 2009 through 2013 $5.7 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.[6]

 

·         Tucker was a leader of the early mid 1990s education reform attempt known as Outcome Based Education. Tucker served as the executive director of the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy. Tucker was the author of the famous “Dr. Hillary” letter written on November 11, of 1992 that laid out the  plan for the Federal government takeover of education.[7]

 

·         The CCSS were created in a controlled secretive manner without any external public oversight unlike any normal standards creation process. [8]

 

·         The corporate Partners of CCSSO is a veritable who’s who of organizations that are positioned to profit or are profiting enormously from the implementation of the CCSS. Those organization include; AdvanceED, American Intitutes for Research (AIR), Blackboard, Data Recognition Corporation, ETS, InBloom (Gates partner), IQity, McGraw-Hill Education, Microsoft, Northwest Evaluation Association, Pearson Education, Promethean, Resaissance Learning, Inc., Scrantron, School improvement Network, ACT Inc., Amplify, Apple, The College Board, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Intel Corporation, K12 Inc., Measured Progress, Measurement Incorporated, MetaMetrics, SAS, Scholastic, Task Stream, Texas Instruments, Wilson Language Training, Battelle For Kids, Cisco, Generation Ready, IBM, Questar Assessment, Inc., and Truenorthlogic.[9]

 

·         The CCSS were put in place without the knowledge nor approval of the vast majority of the N.D. citizenry. There is NOTHING STATE LED ABOUT CCSS. NOTHING.

 

Remember back to June of 2010 when Governor John Hoeven and Department of Public Instruction Superintendent Wayne Sandstead requested the permission of the citizens of N.D. to accept the CCSS? Remember the big public discussion when Hoeven and Sanstead explained to North Dakota where the CCSS came from and how they were created and how they would require massive change of the N.D. school system? You do not remember because they did not. So who has the most influence on North Dakota education?  

The Common Core State Standards are the vehicle used without your knowledge or consent to put into place a systemic state-wide education revolution. Using money from the taxpayer of N.D. and a whole bunch from huge education service providers and who knows who else, an education change of a magnitude that you were never told about is in motion. Is this possible?

How about Bill and Melinda Gates? What about politically connected large corporations who will dominate multiple aspects of our children’s education? How about Washington D.C. based non-profits supported by Gates and all kinds of folks that nobody knows who they are? What if those non-profits were obtaining lots of North Dakota taxpayer’s money to work with the unknowns to control your children’s education?

The citizens of North Dakota must demand to know “who are all of the other shadow supporters of NGA and CCSSO?”  Why in the world are we (N.D. taxpayers) paying dues to NGA and CCSSO so that they can implement policies that are secretly devised, secretly implemented, and that appear to have the design to usurp the control of education from North Dakotans with our money?

Maybe Senator Hoeven, or Governor Dalrymple, or Kristen Baesler know what is really going on. Are they going to tell you if they know? Maybe they can reassure you….because:

If you like your local control of education, you can keep your local control. Period.

 

[1] Common Core: How Nonprofits Reaped Millions –

As Schneider points out, the NGA received $23.6 million from the Gates Foundation prior to June of 2009, and an additional $2.1 million after that date “to work with state policymakers on the implementation of the Common Core State Standards…”

The state school officers (CCSSO) received $47.1 million from Gates prior to June of 2009, with the largest payout to support data “access” and “data driven decisions.”

Schneider points out that, prior to June of 2009, Achieve, Inc. received $23.5 million in funding from the Gates Foundation. Another $13.2 million followed after the Common Core was created, with $9.3 million devoted to “building strategic alliances” for Common Core promotion.

To Coleman’s “nonprofit” Student Achievement Partners, which has always been only devoted to the Common Core standards, Gates bestowed $6.5 million in June of 2012.

“In total, the four organizations primarily responsible for CCSS – NGA, CCSSO, Achieve, and Student Achievement Partners – have taken $147.9 million from Bill Gates,” Schneider concludes”.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/01/25/Common-Core-Where-Nonprofits-Reaped-Millions

 

[2] Controlling Education From the Top: Why Common Core is Bad for America -

 

“Because  NGA  and  CCSSO led its  creation, the Common Core State Standards Initiative claims  that  it  is  a  state led  effort,  implying that it had legislative grants of authority from individual states.  In fact, through 2008, the Common Core Initiative was a plan of private groups being  implemented  through  trade associations,  albeit  trade  associations  that NGA, CCSSO, and Achieve, Inc. accepted more than  27 million from the Gates Foundation alone  to  advance  the  Standards  and  the connected data collection and assessments”.

http://pioneerinstitute.org/download/controlling-education-from-the-top/

 

[3] Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Search Pages

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Search#q/k=National%20Governors%20association

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Search#q/k=Council%20of%20Chief%20State%20School%20Officers

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Search#q/k=Achieve%2C%20inc.

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Search#q/k=%22Student%20Achievement%20Partners%22

 

[4] Carnegie Foundation Grants:

http://carnegie.org/grants/grants-database/

 

[5] From the NGA website article, “Common Core State Standards Development Work Group and Feedback Group Announced”:

The Standards Development Work Group is currently engaged in determining and writing the college and career readiness standards in English-language arts and mathematics. This group is composed of content experts from Achieve, Inc., ACT, and the College Board. This group will be expanded later in the year to include additional experts to develop the standards for grades K-12 in English language arts and mathematics. Additionally, CCSSO and the NGA Center have selected an independent facilitator and an independent writer as well as resource advisors to support each content area work group throughout the standards development process. The Work Group's deliberations will be confidential throughout the process. States and national education organizations will have an opportunity to review and provide evidence-based feedback on the draft documents throughout the process.

 

The members of the mathematics Work Group are:

 

§  Sara Clough, Director, Elementary and Secondary School Programs, Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.

§  Phil Daro, Senior Fellow, America's Choice

§  Susan K. Eddins, Educational Consultant, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (Retired)

§  Kaye Forgione, Senior Associate and Team Leader for Mathematics, Achieve

§  John Kraman, Associate Director, Research, Achieve

§  Marci Ladd, Mathematics Consultant, The College Board & Senior Manager and Mathematics Content Lead, Academic Benchmarks

§  William McCallum, University Distinguished Professor and Head, Department of Mathematics, The University of Arizona &Mathematics Consultant, Achieve

§  Sherri Miller, Assistant Vice President, Educational Planning and Assessment System (EPAS) Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.

§  Ken Mullen, Senior Program Development Associate—Mathematics, Elementary and Secondary School Programs, Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.

§  Robin O'Callaghan, Senior Director, Mathematics, Research and Development, The College Board

§  Andrew Schwartz, Assessment Manager, Research and Development, The College Board

§  Laura McGiffert Slover, Vice President, Content and Policy Research, Achieve

§  Douglas Sovde, Senior Associate, Mathematics, Achieve

§  Natasha Vasavada, Senior Director, Standards and Curriculum Alignment Services, Research and Development, The College Board

§  Jason Zimba, Faculty Member, Physics, Mathematics, and the Center for the Advancement of Public Action, Bennington College and Cofounder, Student Achievement Partners

 

Members of the English-language Arts Work Group are:

§   

§  Sara Clough, Director, Elementary and Secondary School Programs, Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.

§  David Coleman, Founder, Student Achievement Partners

§  Sally Hampton, Senior Fellow for Literacy, America's Choice

§  Joel Harris, Director, English Language Arts Curriculum and Standards, Research and Development, The College Board

§  Beth Hart, Senior Assessment Specialist, Research and Development, The College Board

§  John Kraman, Associate Director, Research, Achieve

§  Laura McGiffert Slover, Vice President, Content and Policy Research, Achieve

§  Nina Metzner, Senior Test Development Associate—Language Arts, Elementary and Secondary School Programs, Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.

§  Sherri Miller, Assistant Vice President, Educational Planning and Assessment System (EPAS) Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.

§  Sandy Murphy, Professor Emeritus, University of California – Davis

§  Jim Patterson, Senior Program Development Associate—Language Arts, Elementary and Secondary School Programs, Development, Education Division, ACT, Inc.

§  Sue Pimentel, Co-Founder, StandardsWork; English Language Arts Consultant, Achieve

§  Natasha Vasavada, Senior Director, Standards and Curriculum Alignment Services, Research and Development, The College Board

§  Martha Vockley, Principal and Founder, VockleyLang, LLC

 

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Tucker

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database#q/k=NCEE

 

[7] The "Dear Hillary" letter, written on Nov. 11, 1992 by Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), lays out a plan "to remold the entire American system" into "a seamless web that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system for everyone," coordinated by "a system of labor market boards at the local, state and federal levels" where curriculum and "job matching" will be handled by counselors "accessing the integrated computer-based program."

http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/marc_tucker/

 

[8] Diane Ravitch

There is a recognized protocol for writing standards, and the Common Core standards failed to comply with that protocol.

 

In the United States, the principles of standard-setting have been clearly spelled out by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

 

On its website ANSI describes how standards should be developed in every field:

The American National Standards Institute ”has served in its capacity as administrator and coordinator of the United States private sector voluntary standardization system for more than 90 years. Founded in 1918 by five engineering societies and three government agencies, the Institute remains a private, nonprofit membership organization supported by a diverse constituency of private and public sector organizations.

 

“Throughout its history, ANSI has maintained as its primary goal the enhancement of global competitiveness of U.S. business and the American quality of life by promoting and facilitating voluntary consensus standards and conformity assessment systems and promoting their integrity. The Institute represents the interests of its nearly 1,000 company, organization, government agency, institutional and international members through its office in New York City, and its headquarters in Washington, D.C.”

 

ANSI’s fundamental principles of standard-setting are transparency, balance, consensus, and due process, including a right to appeal by interested parties. According to ANSI, there are currently more than 10,000 American national standards, covering a broad range of activities.

 

The Common Core standards were not written in conformity with the ANSI standard-setting process that is broadly recognized across every field of endeavor.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/03/24/ravitch-the-best-reason-to-oppose-the-common-core-standards/

 

[9] http://www.ccsso.org/Who_We_Are/Business_and_Industry_Partnerships/Corporate_Partners.html

 

 

Click here to email your elected representatives.

Comments

Wonderful. Everything everyone needs to know…thank you for all you do!

Kathy O'Brien on April 26, 2014 at 12:32 pm

In bullet point #8 (referenced as [7]), the “Dr. Hillary” letter is an incorrect label. It is known as the “Dear Hillary” letter.

Steve Cates on April 26, 2014 at 02:25 pm

“If you like your child thinking independently without being brainwashed, your child can keep thinking independently without being brainwashed.” Can we all just say “Homeschool”?

Lynn Bergman on May 6, 2014 at 11:25 pm
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