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Common Core Math In Texas?

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COMMON CORE MATH IN TEXAS? WHY TEXAS SCHOOLS SHOULD NOT USE CENTRALIZED GOVERNMENT CONTROL

Part 1 of the Series: Common Core Math War Rages in Texas

By Carole Hornsby Haynes, Ph.D.     

Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN, Texas – In 2012 the Texas State Board of Education approved new math curriculum standards.  Since then, chaos has erupted over these standards.

Randy Houchins and John Pendergraff, two mechanical engineers with children in Texas public schools, are very adamant that the Common Core process standards have managed to creep into their children’s math materials and STAAR tests.

Since Common Core is illegal in Texas, how could this happen? 

And why shouldn’t Texas schools use Common Core math if they prefer?  This series seeks an answer to these questions.

One of the national experts for the Texas math curriculum standards review was Dr. James Milgram, who has been highly critical of Common Core math.   Milgram, professor of mathematics emeritus, Stanford University who was a member of Common Core’s Validation Committee and the only content expert in mathematics for the standards, refused to approve the standards.

Core Math Standards, according to Milgram, have very low expectations.

Milgram compares U.S. requirements with those in high achieving countries where students study Algebra I and the first semester of Geometry in Grades 6, 7 or 8 and by Grade 9 will have completed much of our Algebra II content and Geometry at a more sophisticated level than U.S. students.  Students from high achieving countries are expected to complete a standard Calculus course to graduate from high school with over 90% of the populations typically being high school graduates.

By the end of 7th Grade, Core Standards are roughly two years behind.  Common Core math includes “most — but not all — of Algebra I and about 50% of regular Algebra II, as well a ‘strange’ Geometry course,” says Milgram.

Milgram notes that Calculus is required for most critical areas such as engineering, medicine, computer science, economics and the sciences.  (Milgram & Stotsky, “Lowering the Bar:  How Common Core Math Fails to Prepare High School Students for STEM,”)

Professor Jason Zimba, lead writer of Common Core’s mathematics standards, has admitted that Common Core prepares students only for a two-year college. When asked whether Common Core prepares students for a STEM career, Zimba replied, “Not only not for STEM, it’s also not for selective colleges.” (Emphasis added)

Why did writers of Common Core Math decide only Algebra I is essential?

The answer to this question lies buried in the history of the birthing of Common Core – which is linked directly to Hillary Clinton.

In 1989, the National Center for Education and the Economy formed a commission under the U.S. Department of Labor.  The NCEE is a highly connected “nonprofit” with a role akin to that of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s funding of Common Core.

Along with other key players, the commission included Hillary Rodham Clinton, NCEE leader Marc Tucker, Michael Cohen (key in Clinton’s Goals 2000 and later Common Core), and HillaryCore architect, Ira Magaziner.

On November 11, 1991, Marc Tucker sent the famous “Dear Hillary” letter, laying out a master plan for the Clinton administration to seize the entire U.S. educational system to serve national economic planning of the workforce.

Tucker’s plan is “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.”

This ambitious plan does not address teaching children how to read, write, or calculate.  Instead, public schools will change from teaching academic basics and knowledge to training for the global economy in jobs selected by workforce boards – training for American collectivism.

Tucker told Hillary that “radical changes in attitudes, values, and beliefs are required.” He said the way to overcome this resistance was “consensus building” among governors and Congress.  

It was this same game plan, along with many of the same people and organizations, of Common Core.

Tucker’s comprehensive plan was implemented in three laws signed by President Bill Clinton in 1994:

1.     The Goals 2000 Act

2.     The School-to-Work Act, and

3.     The Reauthorized Elementary & Secondary Education Act.

These three laws create the following mechanisms to restructure public schools:

·         All elected officials on school boards and in state legislatures would be bypassed by making federal funds flow to the Governor and his appointees on workforce development boards.

·          

·         A computer database, a.k.a. “a labor market information system,” would be established so school personnel could compile and track personal information for each student and his family from birth or preschool onward, identified by the child’s social security number: academic, medical, mental, psychological, behavioral, and interrogations by counselors. The school, the government, and future employers would have access to the computerized data.

·          

·         Centralized government control would come through “national standards” and “national testing” that take over tests, assessments, school honors and rewards, financial aid, and the Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM), designed to replace the high school diploma.

Tucker’s plan uses the German system which trains children for specific jobs to serve the workforce and the global economy  instead of educating them to make their own choices.  Marc Tucker’s plan prepares public school students for the workforce only – our “worker bees.”

This education structure that Hillary helped to design is the forerunner of Common Core.  It was Hillary who sold the idea of national standards to Obama.  Common Core fulfills some of the education agenda that she failed to get passed.

In 2013 Marc Tucker discussed the key findings of the NCEE study about college and career readiness.  Of the students in U.S. colleges, 45 percent attend community colleges which provide not only most of the nation’s vocational education, but are also a main pathway to four-year colleges. Algebra II is not a prerequisite of community colleges so NCEE recommended that schools abandon the requirement that all high school students be required to take Algebra II.

Further, Algebra I should be delayed until Grade 10.  Of critical importance is that this delay precludes high school students being able to take Calculus. 

Also of critical importance, says Dr. Milgram, is that,

“This [NCEE] report does not consider the question of which four-year colleges will accept just one year (Algebra I) of high school math.  Virtually all the higher rated ones…require at least four years.

“The study ignores what will happen if the community college student transfers to a four-year college.”  

In my next posting, I’ll explore what happened during the math TEKS review.  Dr. Milgram, Niki Hayes, Randy Houchins and many others have candidly spoken with me about the events surrounding this curriculum review and how things went awry.

Follow Carole Hornsby Haynes at www.drcarolehhaynes.com

 

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Takeover of American Universities

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www.drcarolehhaynes.com. 

 

 

Across America storm clouds are gathering. America is under assault by left wing revolutionaries.

Takeover of American Universities

For decades American universities have been undergoing a fundamental change. It is there that the radical left molds the views of the students who are targeted as agents of permanent change for American culture and freedoms. The Progressive ideology, which rejects America’s founding principles, overturns moral norms, and seeks to destroy liberty and free enterprise, is dominant at a majority of American colleges and universities. Students are ignorant of our Western and American heritage and the true meaning of our Constitution. We are losing those precious freedoms bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers. 

University campus mobs are growing in strength and numbers, led by a very vocal minority with outrageous demands targeted against an individual rather than the university, per Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals method – the bible for those seeking to overthrow a nation.

On more than 1,000 American colleges and universities a radical left campaign is raging to force divestment by universities of their investments in fossil fuels.

On November 10, 2015 the National Association of Scholars (NAS) published “Inside Divestment: The Illiberal Movement To Turn A Generation Against Fossil Fuels,” which documents the real purpose of the divestment campaign. Director of research projects at NAS and author of Inside Divestment Rachelle Peterson said, “The organizers’ goal is not to cause colleges to divest, but to anger students at the refusal of colleges to divest fully and to turn their frustration into long-term antipathy toward the modern fossil fuel-based economy.”

Peter Wood, president of NAS explained,

The movement pretends to change the way we generate energy, but its actual aim is to generate resentment, which is fuel for political demagoguery.  The ultimate beneficiaries are rich people whose investments in ‘green energy’ will prosper only if they can trick the public to strand our reserves of coal, oil, and gas underground. They favor high-priced, inefficient technologies that happen to require massive government subsidies coupled with sweeping new government powers.  Students drawn by ‘save the world’ rhetoric and prevented from ever hearing arguments on the other side have become willing pawns for a movement that, rightly understood, is profoundly anti-democratic and that will also consign much of humanity to perpetual poverty. 

Opponents to the radicals’ divestment campaign are bullied and smeared. Why would serious students waste their time and money in such an evil and hostile environment!

Consider a few of the latest headlines about campus life:

  • Dartmouth students lead profane Black Lives Matter protest”
  • “Black Vanderbilt prof. latest target of racial protests”
  • Amherst students demand crackdown against free speech”
  • Public university steers students, dollars to Planned Parenthood”
  • Afrikan Black Coalition seeks to ‘overthrow the Constitution,’ ‘stop white people’”
  • Yale student protesters allegedly spit on free speech advocates”
  • Claremont students feel marginalized, demand resources and resignations”
  • “Second Video: Yale, Cornell, and Syracuse administrators destroy ‘oppressive’ Constitution” 

During the Republican debate last week, Senator Marco Rubio said that welders earn more than philosophers. Although his information about salaries was inaccurate, he did have a point. Welders earn considerably less than philosophers but there are more jobs available for welders than for philosophers. Philosophers do possess college credentials but, for recent graduates, there is quite probably a mountain of debt along with that degree and a distinct possibility that the graduate will have difficulty in securing a job to retire the debt.

So the question is this: what value are students receiving for their high-priced degrees? One parent tweeted that sending her child to welding school appears to be preferable to wasting her money at Amherst. A student tweeted that since college is now a joke, he has chosen a trade school instead.

Parents and students can starve these radical education beasts by spending their money at conservative institutions that focus on old-fashioned higher learning. Hillsdale College is widely known for its classical education and graduates who have gone forward to positively influence our government, the economy, and our culture. Outside of military academies, it is one of the few colleges that requires every student to take a course on the Constitution to graduate.

Radical left wing professors can spew their vicious hatred of America and our values and traditions ONLY if someone is willing to pay them to do so.

Let’s give those left wing revolutionaries pink slips and shut down the institutions that provide them a platform to destroy our nation — paid for by we the people!

Your Zip Code Is Now Under the Federal Government’s Control

So you moved to a pricey address to provide you and your family a safe environment from violence, drugs, murders, robberies and to have good schools for the kids. Forget that!

The Obama administration thinks you are discriminating and aims to turn your world, your neighborhood, and your schools upside down.

Through Affirmatively Further Fair Housing (AFFH), President Obama is robbing the suburbs to pay for big city costs. This rabid Saul Alinsky community organizer bought into the insane idea of kool-aid people that urban decay is the fault of those fled to the suburbs with their tax dollars to escape the urban corruption, violence, high taxes, and terrible schools.

In spite of all the government rhetoric, AFFH is about government mandated desegregation of neighborhoods.

AFFH will override local zoning authority and expand federal control over where and how Americans live. Suburban neighborhoods will be forced to build more high-density Section 8 housing in affluent neighborhoods for low income people. If your city has accepted HUD funding, there is no choice but to abide by the radical initiative of AFFH! Not to do so will means the loss of millions of dollars in federal funding.

With Section 8 housing in a neighborhood, schools tend to trend downward in student performance, graduation rates, and college placements. In turn, this decreases property values which results in lower property taxes. For those ISDs which have passed bond issues, lower property taxes will affect the ability of the city to repay the debt. So the vicious cycle is repeated with a tax increase and taxpayer flight to the suburbs.

Yet AFFH is designed to stifle the growth of suburbs. AFFH is really about changing the way Americans live. We are being forced into very high density cities and into mass transportation rather than cars. AFFH will end American local self-rule by a federal regionalist system.

This is the United Nations Agenda 21 playing out around us. It’s much easier to control people in compact areas who are without individual transportation. This restricts movement by the people and makes it much easier for the government to watch who is going where. Federal control is being tightened over education and the minds of our children with the pending passage of ESEA in Washington.

All is going as planned by the leftwing revolutionaries.

How to Stop AFFH

The Gosar Bill, H.R. 1995 designed to stop AFFH, has been filed but has been stalled in the House Judiciary Committee since May 15, 2015. Realistically, the only way we can restore local control is by joint action of a Republican president and a Republican Congress to rescind AFFH and restrict the reach of disparate impact litigation.

Stop All Muslim Immigration to America — Forever!

What do we want America to be like and look like in 5, 10, or 50 years? Do we want to place the American experiment into mothballs? The answer to this question will be determined by our immigration policy.

Do we want to continue to open our doors to illiterates, unskilled labor, and poor people who come here not to assimilate or even to learn our language but for the handouts?

The world is watching in horror as Muslim invaders swarm over Europe, behaving like savages and murdering their hosts. Do we want to open our doors to savages who have a centuries old history of moving into a country, increasing their numbers, killing the citizens, and taking over the host country?

Our choices are these: restore and continue our Christian traditions and values, become a secular nation, or become a Muslim nation. If we try to combine all three, we will look like Europe.

Immigration is not just about the workers, jobs, and economics. Immigration is about the people who become citizens because they determine what our nation and our government will become in the future. 

For those who quibble about radical versus moderate Muslims, the difference is this. Radical Muslims believe that the world must submit NOW to Allah while moderates believe the world will submit to Allah – LATER. The message is the same – the world MUST submit to Allah! When Muslims talk about world peace they really mean that the world has submitted to Islam! It’s not a matter of whether they intend to takeover America, it’s a matter of whether it is NOW or LATER! If we continue to allow them to enter our country, the American Dream will be destroyed. Our existence will be that of beheadings, stoning, whippings, body parts mutilation, and female genital mutilation. A new period of Dark Ages will begin.

Muslims Can Proselytize, But Christians Can’t

Even though American public schools are prohibited by law from proselytizing for a religion, this does not seem to include Islam. Saudi oil money has for decades bought the “right” for Muslims to proselytize in the classroom, teaching non-Muslim students how to practice Islam under the guise of teaching Middle East history, culture, and Arabic.

The purpose for learning Arabic is that Islam requires Muslims to read the Qur’an in Arabic. So how come American public schools are not teaching Hebrew so that Jewish students can read the Holy Bible in Hebrew?

Here are a few of the proselytizing classroom activities in schools across the nation.

  • chant “Praise be to Allah.
  • recite aloud Islamic prayers
  • memorize the Muslim profession of faith
  • wear a necklace with the emblem of the Muslim star and moon crescent
  • wear a burqa
  • wear a robe
  • kneel on a rug and pray while facing in the direction of Mecca
  • learn the Five Pillars of Islam
  • memorize verses of the Qur’an
  • visit a mosque

Of course, if an infidel Christian parent complains, he (I realize that I have committed the unpardonable crime of using “he” to refer to either male or female, but the term ♫ was good for our Founders so it’s good enough for me ♫) is labeled intolerant, racist, hate monger, or worse. The non-compliant Christian student is bullied by the administration and grades and even graduation can be impacted.

Muslims bring neither skills nor money and intend for their host country to permanently support them and to adapt to their ways.

Japan Has It Right on Muslims

In America, we are seeing a rapid influx of Muslims who refuse to even make eye contact in local stores. We are providing them free daycare, free education, free cell phones, free housing, free transportation, free medical care, and cash for their every need. They can bring in their relatives through chain migration. In return, these arrogant and ruthless people despise us and demand even more.

In America, Muslims are demanding foot washing baths at airports, halal food in jails, Arabic studies in public schools and universities, and the banning of pork from public places. They proselytize in public schools while denying the same to Christians. There have been honor killings in Texas and other states.

Our Constitutional Republic founded on Judeo-Christian principles is totally incompatible with Islam and Sharia law. Islam is a system — religion, military, and political — with the Quran calling for the killing of anyone who is not a Muslim, even if they are family members. Bill Federer at American Minute compares the Quran and the Constitution to show how incompatible they are.

Since the Bible and Quran are completely opposite in their teachings, it is impossible to uphold the Constitution using the Quran.

Muslims are open about their intent to shred the Constitution and install Shari’a as the law of the land in America. Their rationale is that Shari’a law is from Allah while the Constitution is manmade.

Japan has chosen to approach Islam differently, both officially and publicly and so has avoided the problems of the West. At the diplomatic level, senior officials in Japan rarely entertain Muslim leaders and rarely visit Muslim countries. The relationship extends only to the Japanese importation of oil and gas products from some Muslim countries.

Muslims who go to Japan are usually employees of foreign companies, although the official policy is to deny entry to Muslims, even engineers, doctors, and managers. Japanese corporations seeking foreign workers let it be known that Muslims need not apply. Construction workers brought in through foreign contractors keep a very low profile.

Permanent residency is seldom granted to Muslims. The official policy is not to grant citizenship to Muslims, regardless of how long they have lived in Japan.

If Muslims are caught proselytizing for Islam, they can be deported and/or jailed.

It is difficult to import Quarans and few mosques exist. The establishment of Muslim organizations is forbidden. Few Arabic classes are found in universities. Men are expected to pray at home and not prostrate themselves collectively in public areas unless they wish to risk jail and/or deportation.

Halal food is not readily available in supermarkets and Shari’a law does not exist at all.

Unlike Americans who get caught in the politically correct trap of trying to distinguish between radical and moderate Muslims, Japan assumes that all Muslims are fundamentalists who are unwilling to give up their barbaric ways and Shari’a law.

Unlike Americans, the Japanese do not find it necessary to apologize for their attitude toward Muslims and their officials politely refrain from answering questions about their discrimination of Muslims.

Unlike America, Japan does not have organizations to defend Muslims against the government nor are there contractors making billions of dollars to resettle Muslim refugees.

Japan, unlike America, protects its workers from migrant workers who would take the jobs of natives. They believe that Japanese jobs are for Japanese workers, even if the labor cost is higher.

We must stop the guilt trip and decide if the United States of America that was founded in 1789 is the nation we want today for ourselves and our children. If it is, then we must return to the Constitution as it was intended by our founders.

We must send packing all immigrants, activist judges, the U.N., and any others who want to change our national heritage and our Constitutional Republic. There are other countries they can destroy, but not ours.

 

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