Stotsky: Bill Gates' Deceptive Drive to Continue Common
Core Will Weaken Public Schools
by Dr. Sandra Stotsky 7 Sep 2014, 6:31 PM PDT
The Gates Foundation has
been very busy trying to figure out ways for governors,
state boards, and commissioners of education to pretend they are giving up Common Core’s standards or tests, while ensuring
these states still have warmed-over versions in place to satisfy Bill Gates’
ambitions.
We now have many examples of states that have gone through
the motions to placate the still-growing army of parents, teachers, state
legislators, and other citizens demanding a stronger, not weaker, public school
system. But, instead of developing stronger alternative standards in place
of Common Core’s misbegotten standards, some elected and appointed officials
have deliberately played a trick on all of them by keeping Common Core’s
tentacles in place while they use less toxic labels to describe the octopus
strangling the education system.
Why so many seemingly rational people want to believe that
Common Core’s standards and the tests based on them are worth keeping is a
subject for an in-depth psychological study. Why have so many, including
reporters and others in the media, been so willingly fooled by a few Professor
Harold Hills when they all must know they are harming the economic future of
all children in our public schools, including the minority children they
profess to care about the most?
By now, five years after the release of Common Core’s final
version of its mathematics and English language arts standards, it is quite
clear to those who can read English that these standards cannot make our
students ready for authentic college-level work -- and that they were not
intended to. It should be clear by now that they were intended to get
underperforming students into college (and then out with a diploma) in order to
close the education “gaps” between students who are willing to spend some of
their time paying attention to academic schoolwork and students who are not.
Instead of letting young adolescents enroll in a course of
studies they prefer in secondary school, Bill Gates, with the eager help of all
the organizations he has funded to promote his image as an education saint,
prefers to make our teachers accountable for young adolescents’ unwillingness
to pay attention to what he thinks is good for them. The irony is that even he
doesn’t think his own children should be enrolled in a Common Core-based
curriculum.
His scheme for doing an end-run around state legislators,
parents, and local school boards was bought hook, line, and sinker by the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce as well as by most state
commissioners and boards of education -- and many governors. Didn’t they
wonder why the Gates Foundation still refuses to fund discussions of the actual
quality of the standards? And the meaning of college readiness?
The “gaps” will be closed under Common Core, not by teaching
all students more but by making sure that the most able students learn less at
the high school level so that the Gates-funded and self-appointed policy wonks
at Achieve, Inc. and the Fordham Institute can boast of equal (but equally low)
expectations for all of them.
The latest problem for the Gates Foundation is the current
implosion of Common Core even faster than it was hoodwinked into place in 2010
by unwitting state boards and commissioners of education. What should the
new party line be: That states really don’t want demanding standards? That
their teachers are afraid of more demanding standards? That those “white
suburban” parents want only A’s for their brilliant offspring?
The issue for parents, of course, is that they won’t accept
a system rigged to assess their progeny in a way that discredits
discipline-based knowledge.
It’s tough to come up with a new party line that will keep
Common Core in place. But maybe the latest ploy being pushed by the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce will do the trick: put
out “loss leaders” from an inventory of Common Core-aligned lessons and get
teachers to buy 50%-off “bargains” before school starts.
Governors
National
Governors' Association launched the Common Core educational standards.
Note: Jeb Bush is a supporter
for the Common Core educational standards, a member of the Alfalfa
Club, an advisory committee member for the Hispanic Leadership Network,
and was the Florida state government governor; commerce secretary.
Hispanic
Leadership Network is an offshoot of the American Action Network.
Frederic V. Malek
is a member of the Alfalfa Club, the founder & board member for the American
Action Network, and a trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank).
Shirley M.
Hufstedler was a lifetime trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank),
and the secretary for the U.S. Department of Education.
James S.
Crown is a trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank), and a member
of the Commercial Club of Chicago.
Lester Crown
is a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago, and was a lifetime
trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank).
Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation was a funder for the Aspen Institute
(think tank), the Brookings Institution (think tank), and the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Aspen Institute (think
tank), the Brookings Institution (think tank), and the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace (think tank).
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society.
Cyrus F.
Freidheim Jr. is an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think
tank), and a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago.
Valerie B. Jarrett
is a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago, the senior adviser for the
Barack Obama administration, and was a director at the Joyce
Foundation.
Joyce Foundation
was a funder for the Aspen Institute (think tank), the Brookings Institution (think tank), the Achieve Inc.,
and the Education Trust.
Achieve Inc. helped
develop the Common Core educational standards.
Diane S. Ravitch
was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution (think tank), the assistant
secretary for the U.S. Department of Education, and is a critic of the Common
Core educational standards.
Klaus Kleinfeld is a trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), was a director at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and a 2008 Bilderberg conference
participant (think tank).
Internment Homes for the
Elderly (Past Research on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce)
Friday, September 5, 2014
Jessica Tuchman Mathews was an honorary trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), is the president of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace (think tank), a director at the American Friends of Bilderberg
(think tank), and a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think tank).
Ed Griffin’s interview with Norman Dodd in 1982
(The investigation into the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace uncovered the plans for population control by involving the United States
in war)
Andrew Carnegie
was the founder of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (think
tank), the founder of the Carnegie
Corporation of New York, and the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Richard
W. Riley was a trustee at the Carnegie
Corporation of New York, and the secretary for the U.S. Department of Education.
Carnegie
Corporation of New York was a funder for the Brookings Institution
(think tank), the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (think
tank), Achieve Inc., and the
New Teacher Project.
Achieve Inc. helped
develop the Common Core educational standards.
Michael
Cohen is the president of the Achieve
Inc., and was the assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Education.
Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation was a funder for the Brookings
Institution (think tank), and the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching, and the Education Trust.
Kati
Haycock is a trustee at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of
Teaching, the chair for the New Teacher Project, and the
president of the Education Trust.
Russlynn H. Ali
was the VP for the Education Trust, and the assistant secretary for
civil rights for the U.S. Department of Education.
Race to the Top
is a grant program from the U.S. Department of Education, and encourages
the adoption of the Common Core educational standards.
Margaret
Spellings was the secretary for the U.S. Department of Education, is a senior adviser for the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce, and the U.S. program advisory panel member for the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation.
William H. Gates
III is a co-chair for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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