Common Core State Standards are essentially education without representation and threatens the freedoms of families nationwide. You don't need to know everything about the Common Core State Standards agenda to make a strong case against it. Even if all the CCSS and it's curriculum models were healthy educationally, even if you could support data-mining student's personal info for the "betterment" of the workforce of the future, CCSS is still a federal takeover of education that has serious implications for the future! On the pure basis of our republican form of government parents nationwide should be seriously concerned and should oppose the federal government taking this much control over local education.
With CCSS we have the most significant change in US education EVER. We should oppose a mandated set of national standards, national tests, and national curriculum models (that inevitably follow such standards) because they are binding on the states. Once agreed to CCSS will transform classrooms coast to coast without parents and citizens having any say in what's happening in their local schools and practically no democratic means to appeal should they be displeased in the future!
We must oppose our state Governors and legislators relinquishing our constitutional powers to the DOE. CCSS has been a clandestine un-democratic takeover of education coast to coast, whatever the supposed benefits, the dangers are far more compelling.
Consider the billions in local and state taxes we pay to fund our schools that will be essentially controlled by the Federal Department of Education by de facto means under CCSS. When we as a state sign onto this federal compact we use state dollars to carry out federal mandates in education. So what if we don't like something in the mandates? So what if we want to change this or that to better suit our state? Nope! Out of luck. You signed the compact your obligated to the whole enchilada!
I know firsthand how difficult it is to address bad public policy when state government encroaches on local school districts. When Nebraska state legislators passed a sweeping school attendance law that removed responsibility from local school boards to the state, they arbitrarily made delinquents of tens if thousands of school children, the majority of whom were at no-risk of academic failure or a life of crime. Nebraska parents found it extremely difficult to affect reforms and solve the local concerns once that power shifted to state government.
Imagine you have a serious concern about a curriculum model that was developed as a direct response to the CCSS. You talk to a member of your school board about your concerns seeking a solution to the problem and they say, "I'm sorry we have to do it that way because it's the law." You then contact your legislator for assistance and they in turn tell you there is nothing they can do because it is a federal standard they have no oversight. What do you do then? Who do you call?
It is unimaginable to think that policies that affect families so intimately would be drawn up by unelected boards in Washington and be binding on my family with no local representation to turn to for redress when those policies become tyrannical. How much harder is it to organize a national grassroots opposition to federal control then to affect change in your own school district? Almost Impossible!!
It was for this reason that our founders taught us that the government closest to the people governs best and that for freedom to endure you needed an educated and engaged populous who are eternally vigilant in protecting those natural rights that the constitution was designed to protect. We are relinquishing our God given rights at breath taking speed and I fear it will be too late to recover them when we finally realize the folly of it all!
STOP COMMON CORE NOW!
No comments:
Post a Comment