“Those who have the priv­i­lege to know, have the duty to act.” ‑Albert Einstein

Oba­ma and ‘Con­ser­v­a­tive’ Groups Use Bait and Switch Tac­tics. They are using the momen­tum against Com­mon Core to com­plete and fur­ther their agenda—“Choice” and Char­ter Schools.

The truth has uneasy con­se­quences. ‘Con­ser­v­a­tives’ and Repub­li­cans are reveal­ing their so-called “Choice Plan” that mim­ics the Oba­ma-Dun­can Plan. In an arti­cle post­ed by the ‘con­ser­v­a­tive’ orga­ni­za­tion Free­dom­Works, their entire pro­posed con­tro­ver­sial agen­da for “choice” in edu­ca­tion demands rebut­tal, dis­cus­sion and dis­sec­tion. The Ein­stein quote at the top of this arti­cle val­i­dates my deci­sion to act on cur­rent doc­u­men­ta­tion, explain­ing to the Amer­i­can peo­ple the dan­ger that these ‘con­ser­v­a­tive groups’ rep­re­sent to par­ents when they demand “choice.”

Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors who say that Com­mon Core is gone are using fraud and decep­tion to fur­ther their cause. Their cause is gov­ern­ment-con­trolled, tax­pay­er-fund­ed “choice” and char­ter schools. Repub­li­cans are now con­ve­nient­ly using the slo­gan “No Com­mon Core” as a lit­mus test—a pop­u­lar hot but­ton that will cue the Fall elec­tions. But, are cit­i­zens and par­ents aware of where that path will take us? For exam­ple, see the fol­low­ing quote:

Com­mon Core has emerged as the newest Repub­li­can lit­mus test for gaug­ing can­di­dates’ con­ser­v­a­tive bona fides, and experts say the con­tro­ver­sial nation­al edu­ca­tion [Com­mon Core] stan­dard will help shape elec­tions from school boards to the White House for the fore­see­able future.

This is the agen­da that was divulged by FreedomWorks:

A draft action plan by the advo­ca­cy group Free­dom­Works lays out the effort as a series of step­ping stones: First, mobi­lize to strike down the Com­mon Core. Then push to expand school choice by offer­ing par­ents tax cred­its or vouch­ers to help pay tuition at pri­vate and reli­gious schools. Next, ral­ly the troops to abol­ish the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion. Then it’s on to elim­i­nat­ing teacher tenure.

Let me explain these real issues:

The ‘Anti-Com­mon Core Move­ment’ is cloud­ing the real issue. While states are think­ing they have struck down Com­mon Core, Oba­ma is using the ESEA Flex­i­bil­i­ty Waivers to hide his real agenda—to Con­tin­ue Com­mon Core. Many ‘con­ser­v­a­tives’ are—wittingly or unwittingly—helping Obama’s cause.

The move to “Strike Down Com­mon Core” is a fake. It is a sophis­ti­cat­ed machi­na­tion to mas­quer­ade the real agen­da embraced by ‘con­ser­v­a­tive’ groups who are work­ing in tan­dem with the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion. “Race to the Top” and the Com­mon Core Copy­right made up the ‘foot in the door’ for stan­dard­iz­ing the 50-state strat­e­gy. This was the first step towards nation­al­iz­ing education—with nation­al stan­dards, a nation­al test, and mov­ing toward a nation­al cur­ricu­lum. Par­ents against Com­mon Core are being used, espe­cial­ly by direct­ing them to a new, easy answer to side­step Com­mon Core, i.e., gov­ern­ment-con­trolled “choice.”

‘Con­ser­v­a­tive’ groups have told par­ents they can save their chil­dren from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment by sup­port­ing this “choice.” Lit­tle do these ‘new-to-the-sys­tem’ par­ents real­ize that they are being set up for a trap. Choice is that trap, and char­ter schools are right behind, for the big­ger trap agen­da. When this agen­da becomes ful­ly oper­a­tional, par­ents will actu­al­ly lose their voice. They will lose their vote in our rep­re­sen­ta­tive form of gov­ern­ment. There will be no true rep­re­sen­ta­tion. The word “account­abil­i­ty” has mean­ing; it means being in com­pli­ance to fed­er­al law. You know, the fed­er­al strings attached to fed­er­al mon­ey. This fake “choice” is attached to fed­er­al strings.

What hap­pens with Com­mon Core? Col­lege and Career Ready Stan­dards, or Work­force Readi­ness Skills, in a stan­dards-based sys­tem will iden­ti­fy your child to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment as an indi­vid­ual future glob­al work­er. It does­n’t mat­ter what name the stan­dards use—it is with­in the pow­er of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to access your indi­vid­ual child through these indi­vid­ual stan­dards. This plan was laid out by the U.S. Depart­ment of Labor in the Secretary’s Com­mis­sion for Achiev­ing Nec­es­sary Skills (SCANS) report way back in 1992. Oba­ma has set out his plan through “Race to the Top,” his plan to nation­al­ize edu­ca­tion. This is also hid­den in the ESEA Flex­i­bil­i­ty Waiv­er, called Title I (explained below). Here is the hard part for peo­ple to understand—the fact is that this same plan was also once called the Rea­gan Plan, the Clin­ton Plan, the Bush Plan, and the Rom­ney Plan. Rom­ney called for using Title I funds and IDEA, which is Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion, the Indi­vid­u­als with Dis­abil­i­ties in Edu­ca­tion Act for school “choice.”

Here is the plan, or let’s call it “The Big Picture”:

Indi­vid­ual stan­dards are to be met by indi­vid­ual stu­dents, taught by indi­vid­ual teach­ers. Indi­vid­ual stu­dents must be taught with validated—approved and certified–curriculum. All three enti­ties are con­trolled through “accountability”—the fed­er­al test. This triad–controlled stan­dards, con­trolled teach­ers, and con­trolled curriculum–is the plan.

This 3‑faceted plan con­trols the outcome—your child or stu­dent. The ‘Con­ser­v­a­tives’’ plan is to fund indi­vid­ual chil­dren wher­ev­er they go to school, so this “choice” mon­ey “fol­lows the child” and extends the account­abil­i­ty even to pri­vate and reli­gious schools.

Both the Lib­er­al and Con­ser­v­a­tive plans take advan­tage (prof­it from) the mon­ey-mak­ing schemes that result from the expan­sion of for-prof­it char­ter schools. Both sides of the polit­i­cal spec­trum have plans that con­verge. They all want the same results—nationalizing edu­ca­tion with fed­er­al con­trol of ALL chil­dren, ALL teach­ers, ALL cur­ricu­lum, and ALL schools or “knowl­edge-dis­pens­ing cen­ters.” Oh, and by the way, they want your local tax base, too.

Here is how this plan will work:

It is all about Title I

The Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion has giv­en states ESEA Flex­i­bil­i­ty Waivers to the Ele­men­tary and Sec­ondary Edu­ca­tion Act (ESEA), which is Bush’s No Child Left Behind leg­is­la­tion. ALL ESEA Flex Waivers require Col­lege and Career Ready Stan­dards. What we have seen so far is decep­tive. A state will with­draw from the Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU), the copy­right for Com­mon Core, and then align Com­mon Core into its own state stan­dards when accept­ing the waiver.

But, par­ents must real­ize that Com­mon Core has been trans­formed with a new name. The state will still con­form to Col­lege and Career Ready Stan­dards man­dat­ed by “Race to the Top” (RTTT) fund­ing, but fur­ther explained in these flex­i­bil­i­ty waivers. Par­tic­u­lar­ly, these stan­dards must go beyond lan­guage arts and math toward work­force readi­ness skills, which orig­i­nal­ly start­ed as Com­mon Core. Some­times a state will include P20W, pre-natal through age 20, stan­dards into the work­force train­ing, expand­ing the K‑12 agen­da. (See, for exam­ple, “Ore­gon’s Com­mon Core Goes P‑20” and Ken­tucky too.)

NOTE: The fol­low­ing pilot states—Ohio, Ken­tucky, Maine, West Vir­ginia, Wis­con­sin, New York, New Hamp­shire, and Oregon—are redesign­ing their edu­ca­tion­al sys­tems to cor­re­late with fed­er­al stan­dards called Inno­va­tion Lab Net­work, fund­ed by the inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tion of Eco­nom­ic and Cul­tur­al Devel­op­ment (OECD), Lumi­na Foun­da­tion, and Chief State School Offi­cers (CCSSO). CCSSO is the group that copy­right­ed the Com­mon Core Stan­dards along with the Nation­al Gov­er­nors Association.

Okla­homa’s pas­sage of House Bill 3399, that sup­pos­ed­ly removed Com­mon Core Stan­dards, stat­ed this in their bill,

Upon the effec­tive date of this act, the State Board of Edu­ca­tion shall seek cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the State Regents for High­er Edu­ca­tion that the sub­ject mat­ter stan­dards for Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts and Math­e­mat­ics which were in place pri­or to the revi­sions adopt­ed by the Board in June 2010 are col­lege-and career-ready as defined in the Fed­er­al Ele­men­tary and Sec­ondary Edu­ca­tion Act (ESEA) Flex­i­bil­i­ty doc­u­ment issued by the Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion.… [empha­sis added] 

Oh no! The leg­is­la­ture put Com­mon Core into law through their Flex Waiv­er! Gov­er­nor Fallin is the Chair­man of the Nation­al Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion (the oth­er group that copy­right­ed the Com­mon Core Stan­dards). Okla­homa now calls their stan­dards “Okla­homa Aca­d­e­m­ic Stan­dards,” and on the front of their Flex Waiv­er called their agen­da “C3, Col­lege, Career, Cit­i­zen­ship Stan­dards”—exact­ly the same as the CCSSO were call­ing it–to expand the stan­dards to include dis­po­si­tions, or atti­tu­di­nal and val­ue stan­dards. We can assume that these stan­dards will include test­ing and inter­ven­tions in the non-cog­ni­tive domain.

Indi­ana’s sup­posed depar­ture from Com­mon Core is referred to as the “grand decep­tion.” Indi­ana’s HB 1427 states

Pro­vides that the state board shall imple­ment edu­ca­tion­al stan­dards that use the com­mon core stan­dards as the base mod­el for aca­d­e­m­ic stan­dards to the extent nec­es­sary to com­ply with fed­er­al stan­dards to receive a Flex­i­bil­i­ty Waiv­er. [empha­sis added] 

South Car­oli­na’s bill, H3893, to stop Com­mon Core and the Smarter Bal­anced Test states

The sum­ma­tive assess­ment must assess stu­dents in English/language arts and math­e­mat­ics, includ­ing those stu­dents as required by the fed­er­al Indi­vid­u­als with Dis­abil­i­ties Edu­ca­tion Act and by Title I of the Ele­men­tary and Sec­ondary Edu­ca­tion Act. For pur­pos­es of this sub­sec­tion, ‘English/language arts’ includes Eng­lish, read­ing, and writ­ing skills as required by exist­ing state stan­dards. [empha­sis added] 

Exist­ing state stan­dards? You guessed it! Com­mon Core. Do you see a pat­tern here? This has hap­pened in sev­er­al states where Com­mon Core is most con­tro­ver­sial. While par­ents believe Com­mon Core is gone, lit­tle do they know those stan­dards were just embed­ded in the ESEA Title I Flex­i­bil­i­ty Waivers signed by your state’s sec­re­tary or super­in­ten­dent of edu­ca­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Okla­homa, Indi­ana, and South Car­oli­na have tak­en the bait. Com­mon Core is still there, with oth­er new force­ful account­abil­i­ty mea­sures, like Val­ue Added Mod­els (VAM), to be sure teach­ers are teach­ing Com­mon Core, and inter­ven­tions using spe­cial edu­ca­tion funds from the Indi­vid­u­als with Dis­abil­i­ties Edu­ca­tion Act (IDEA) called “Response to Inter­ven­tion.” RtI is used for ALL stu­dents to make sure they are cov­ered by IDEA to meet Com­mon Core Standards.

The Plan to Use Title I to Expand School Choice to Pri­vate and Reli­gious schools

How will EVERY child become Title I? Pres­i­dent John­son’s “War on Pover­ty” gave schools fund­ing, called ESEA Title I, to help those schools where there were con­cen­tra­tions of stu­dents who were poor. Inter­est­ing­ly enough, the term was “edu­ca­tion­al­ly deprived.” So, the issue with the ESEA Flex­i­bil­i­ty Waiv­er is that the pover­ty guide­lines were removed. This means that chil­dren who qual­i­fied for free and reduced lunch­es, where a school had to have 40% of stu­dents that qual­i­fied under pover­ty guide­lines, are now in a school where that require­ment is reduced to “0%.” This means ALL indi­vid­ual chil­dren in an entire school can receive fed­er­al ESEA Title I funds for EVERY child: the funds “fol­low the child.”

This means that a child is con­sid­ered “edu­ca­tion­al­ly deprived” if he/she does not meet stan­dards. Inter­est­ing­ly, the ‘Con­ser­v­a­tive’ orga­ni­za­tion Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­sel, (ALEC) just released mod­el leg­is­la­tion for choice and char­ter schools for every state in the coun­try. They refer to stu­dents not meet­ing stan­dards with the term “aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged.” This is what is need­ed to move for­ward with fed­er­al “choice.” EVERY child must be iden­ti­fied for “choice” funds, no mat­ter where they go to school. Oba­ma has done this through the ESEA Flex­i­bil­i­ty Waiver.

Now that ALL chil­dren in pub­lic school are Title I, the Repub­li­cans can take over from here. They want “choice” [those Title I funds] for EVERY stu­dent who goes to pri­vate and reli­gious schools, too! This is a ter­ri­ble bait and switch decep­tion for those par­ents and cit­i­zens who think that choice means free­dom of choice for pri­vate and reli­gious edu­ca­tion! This is not free­dom, nor true choice.

Where is the fed­er­al “choice” agen­da now? ESEA Re-autho­riza­tion Is held up by Sen­a­tor Reid… at the moment.

The Re-autho­riza­tion of ESEA is the bill in Con­gress that changes how fund­ing will now fol­low the child. The Repub­li­cans in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives added “choice” amend­ments to the ESEA Re-autho­riza­tion in HR 5 that can “fol­low the child” with Title I funds into any pri­vate or reli­gious school. This passed the House in July of 2013.

The Democ­rats, on the Sen­ate side, vot­ed to have SB 1094 come out of com­mit­tee, but it has not been brought up for an entire Sen­ate vote. SB 1094 wants Title I funds to fol­low the child to any pub­lic or char­ter school. But, Oba­ma’s Flex­i­bil­i­ty Waivers are doing most of that job already with­out the pas­sage of the Re-autho­riza­tion of ESEA leg­is­la­tion. Oba­ma sup­ports “choice” in the Flex­i­bil­i­ty Waivers in pub­lic schools. The pas­sage of the entire ESEA pack­age (with Repub­li­can amend­ments in con­fer­ence com­mit­tee using fed­er­al “choice” fund­ing) will allow fed­er­al Title I funds to be attached to your child, to have the “choice” to go to any school, any­where. This is the leg­is­la­tion that Oba­ma and the ‘Con­ser­v­a­tive’ groups want to pass for fed­er­al “choice” to become a reality.

WARNING! There are strings attached! Title I Choice funds can be con­nect­ed to your child to go to any char­ter, pri­vate or reli­gious school you choose. Oba­ma wants “equi­ty” in edu­ca­tion. This means the same amount of mon­ey for every child with fed­er­al account­abil­i­ty strings attached. The com­pro­mise will be “choice” for every­one, poten­tial­ly even home school­ers. There will be no dif­fer­ences in schools any­where, nation­al­iz­ing edu­ca­tion in the Unit­ed States through “choice” and Com­mon Core—all will have to “drink the Kool-Aid.” That’s what “equi­ty in edu­ca­tion” means. All schools will become gov­ern­ment schools under the Re-autho­riza­tion of ESEA. You get “choice.” But they con­trol all the schools! For part two click below.

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:

“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.