It’s real easy to play Monday morning quarterback after your team just took a huge hit. Donald Trump promised (and fooled) many citizens into thinking he could get rid of Common Core. So much so that his pick for Secretary of Education is now backtracking on her years of actions financially supporting Common Core. She sits on Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education. This foundation LOVES Common Core and all that comes with it. DeVos, through the Betsy and Steve DeVos Foundation, poured millions of dollars into pro-Common Core candidates.
On some Betsy DeVos Question and Answer website that sprung out of nowhere, she denounces Common Core. This website was created on 8/16/16, but her picture was just added this month. This isn’t some long-time website that shows the DeVos denunciation of Common Core. This website was created specifically for the possibility of a Trump win. Why would anyone put up a q and a website unless they knew what the opposition would immediately come out with? This is what she has to say about Common Core. Items in red are my response to that.
Q: There’s been a lot of talk about Common Core. Can you provide some straight talk on this topic?
Certainly. I am not a supporter—period.
Financial support into candidates and states that support it IS supporting it.
I do support high standards, strong accountability, and local control. When Governors such as John Engler, Mike Huckabee, and Mike Pence were driving the conversation on voluntary high standards driven by local voices, it all made sense.
State standards, as written in the Every Student Succeeds Act, are now state decisions. Trump couldn’t dump them if he tried. There is a big difference between state and local decisions. The states now call the shots on education. The locals are just along for the ride. Local control of education is a thing of the past.
Have organizations that I have been a part of supported Common Core? Of course. But that’s not my position. Sometimes it’s not just students who need to do their homework.
I don’t even know what that means Betsy DeVos. Common Core wasn’t created because kids weren’t doing their homework. It was set up for a VERY specific reason which I will get to soon.
However, along the way, it got turned into a federalized boondoggle.
A very intentional federalized boondoggle where states gave up ALL control to the feds. Once the states adopted the standards, it didn’t end there. In came the standardized testing, the accountability game that judges failing schools based on those same tests, as well as the longitudinal data (which was the real purpose which I will also get to later) creation in every state to allow student data to go out. Once everything was set up in the states through Federal funds (most of which did not go to local schools but to state Departments of Education who paid education reform companies billions of dollars), then the reauthorization of ESEA came about. ESSA is the shift towards this future. Giving the illusion of state control based on federal mandates and snake-oil deals from the Obama administration.
Above all, I believe every child, no matter their zip code or their parents’ jobs, deserves access to a quality education.
Every single corporate education reformer says this, but being pro-school choice has not equated to greater educational improvement for children overall. Especially children that are minorities, low-income, English Language learners, and students with disabilities.
Betsy DeVos, through her foundation work for her own foundation as well as others, has been on of the biggest driving forces for the privatization of American public education. But why? Where is all of this going?
As I put up my post about DeVos selection for the U.S. Secretary of Education, I was met with an onslaught of comments stating she doesn’t support Common Core. Actions speak louder than words. I immediately directed readers to this excellent post showing how she DOES support Common Core and how. And then I wrote this:
To put this in a very easy way to understand, Common Core was created to train young minds for constant all-the-time digital learning. State assessments (based on Common Core) will become stealth assessments embedded in personalized learning/competency-based education environments. Once they bust the unions, traditional school districts will fall. Charters will go online. Our young kids will go to local non-profits to learn online while older kids learn online in a pay to earn environment through Charter Online Inc. Meanwhile, all this data from ed tech is tracking every student and whoring out their personal data and gearing them towards pre-determined professions that corporations want, not the kids. Who do you think will profit from this? Charters. Teachers will become glorified moderators while parents watch their rights slowly disappear. Their kids will go to community health-based centers for everything. This is the grand agenda. There is nothing Trump can do to stop it. Complete control over the future by corporations. Read into plans for Blockchain technology to see where all of this is going…. This has NEVER been about kids. It has always been about corporate profit.
We are now at a huge tipping point with public education. I’ve actually seen parents today, on anti-Common Core Facebook pages, actually trying to convince me DeVos is a good pick and to give her a chance. This is what the corporate education reformers do best. They pit people against each other. While everyone is arguing about this and that, they are getting things done. Planting seeds to get the whole thing done. They are the masters of distraction. Bill Gates is just one of them. Today, we saw another billionaire get the top education job in the country. With no background of ever being an educator. Do you really think it is a coincidence that the past three Secretaries of Education have been fervent supporters of school choice, charter schools, and “higher standards”? You can call Common Core whatever you want. But it is the same everywhere, in every state. It is just a vessel to much bigger plans, a complete and utter transformation of society where the top will always be on the top, but true choice and upward mobility for the rest will be on the bottom. It is central to destroying who we are as a nation. A nation of freedom and free will. That will be stripped from us, forever. We will become the cradle to grave workforce with the rich and elite overlords looking down upon us. The future generations of today’s rich and elite who use their money and influence to reshape society to their mold.
This was going to happen no matter who won the Presidency. Clinton, Trump, Johnson, Stein… it didn’t matter. Who do you really think is running the show? Politicians? No. It is corporations. Follow the money. Read the stuff that is coming out right now through ESSA. Sift through the smoke and open your eyes America. And act. Do something. They have you fooled. Everyone is going nuts about Trump, both sides. Love or hate. Meanwhile, no one is talking about the WOIA bills in every state. Or the ed tech invasion happening in your schools. Or the shift towards getting rid of number grades towards the same type of scores on standardized tests. How many states are developing “Pathways” programs which shift education towards a pre-determined career rather than moving on to college? Trump doesn’t matter. Not in the long run. Neither did Clinton. This was going to happen before your very eyes.
Do you hear anyone, aside from student privacy groups, demanding Trump restore FERPA to pre-2008 and 2011 levels? No. Do you hear anyone making a big deal about the Bill Gates driven work group that is deciding data sharing at ALL levels? No. Do you know why? Because they are distracting you. And they are succeeding.
Someone wrote to me on Facebook today that to change things would require a rebellion. That person wasn’t promoting it. I am. It is what we need. And it has to happen now. Please share this article. Spread it. Make sure people see it and see the truth about what is happening. The reformers will say I am a conspiracy theorist. I will gladly take that. Because this is a vast conspiracy that has been playing out for decades. And they aren’t done yet. Time for a rebellion.
The Season Of Myths 
Republicans and edreformers always saw the test-and-punish regime as a way to diminish or destroy public schools and their hated unions, under cover of “accountability.” But now that they have a clear path to charterization and voucherization, Common Core is irrelevant to them.
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Actually, Common Core is at the top conservatives list to eliminate. Trump seems to be lacking in familiarity with Individuals who hold true conservative ideals. Common Core the biggest fiasco I’ve ever seen. Teaching kids this junk will result in lower productivity and a lack of urgency once they are adults. Instead of looking for the most efficient and quickest way to a solution, they will go around in circles before finding the right path. CC has nothing to do with reasoning like Math does. You are correct about a few things. Conservatives do want to destroy the expensive overpaid, uncaring, lazy and incompetent Unions. A Teacher can barely be reprimanded for poor conduct in many school districts with strong Unions. Vouchers will give families the opportunity of choice if they are dissatisfied with their public school. Why are Democrats, the party that calls for choice for a woman’s right to kill her unborn baby against choice when it comes to Unions and most other liberal causes? If the Unions were busted or even watered down the Democrats would lose billions. It’s the biggest money bilking scheme in history. Why accountability undercover? There is zero accountability in most school districts. Teachers are paid for length of service rather than ability and success. Like any socialist-based government, it makes the good ones give up when they see they haven’t been rewarded for their ability any more than the others.
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Texasnation, vouchers are not what you seem to think they are. It is just an apparatus to get to an endgame that you seriously need to do some reading up on. If vouchers were so great, everyone would love them. But it is just another way to bilk taxpayers out of money. Why would conservatives want to do destroy something that offers protection, due process, and fairness in a profession where teachers could be fired on a whim if they weren’t there? We have seen this with charters and private schools. Someone disagrees with management over something so trivial and they are gone. What is it with accountability? Do you even realize that this accountability so many seem to want is based on flawed data through standardized tests, which are based on Common Core? I’m not saying every teacher is perfect. No one is. But teachers get scapegoated for “failed schools” which have more to do with the environment the students come from than the actual teachers. Choice has become such a bastardized word in education. Did we have all this “choice” when we were growing up? Has choice dramatically improved education? No, it hasn’t. Maybe on those flawed standardized tests which don’t offer accurate measurements. But not overall. The fact that you look at all of this as “conservative” and “liberal” bemoans the fact that all the education reform is corporate driven, not political. The sooner people wake up to that fact, the more they will be able to accept the cold hard reality that our children are nothing more than guinea pigs. Until then, this arguments will continue and children will lose.
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While the currently structured or “standard” approach to the use of vouchers may not be the market cure it could be, all that would be necessary is a rewrite of exactly how a voucher system should work so as to give the owner, of the voucher credit, the power to move their support to another school, even home school, along with the student designated by it.
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I observed the same thing about the so called education activists that are now saying Charters and Vouchers are ok. I got so angry I deactivated my face book account. I too called for rebellion because it truly is the only solution at this point. Parents need to pull their kids out and teachers need to walk off the job. The kids and teachers do not come back until there is plan to shut down the US Department of Education and return education 100% to true local control. There were many good people (not insider billionaires) that could have fixed this mess and also educated Trump on the truth about Charters and Vouchers. Dr. Peg Luksik, Dr. Duke Pesta, Dr. Pat Huff even Anita Hoge and Charlotte Iserbyt as advisers all much better than DeVos. I told my followers that until parents and teachers are prepared to wage war they will not hear from me again.
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Roughly 3% of school age children are home schooled in this nation. This seems like a small number until you consider that it equates to approximately 1.5 million kids. You want to go to war? There’s your army, but you have to be patient. Incrementalism is a two way street. Home schooling remains the fastest growing segment in education. I understand your frustration, but what you do matters. What I’m trying to say in the nicest way possible is, suck it up, buttercup, and get back in the fight.
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Thanks. Good advice. I am no buttercup though. Sometimes we just have to face reality. FB is activated. Just needed a few days to recharge. I am 67 so sorry but I don’t have enough time left to wait for our home schoolers to join the fight. But getting more kids in to home school has been my mission and will continue to be my mission. I help working parents find a way to make it happen. But these evil ed reformers will go after home school eventually as well.
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They are already going after homeschoolers. Look at what Ted Cruz is doing and the bills he is introducing. They want their hands on everyone.
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Educate Trump? Come back to FB and fight #DitzyBetsy with the rest of us. Please!
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You cannot fix Common Core any more than “replace and repeal” Obamacare will do anything more than momentarily delay an entire federal takeover of healthcare. Education and healthcare must be totally removed from any federal involvement. We have federal laws that strictly forbid actions like Common Core, even though it was sneaked through under the shady guise of a state initiative.
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The ESSA has balkanized the fight against the CC$$ and all other things reform into a 50 state fight. Getting the feds out of the way has done less than nothing. Now we all have to fight all over the place instead of having a single, common enemy. It was never the feds who were driving this, they just facilitated it all for the back room oligarchs and corporations. The solution is to evict the usurpers that have infiltrated and co-opted the DOE and make it answer to the people, to force it to fulfill the basic function of gov’t which is to protect it’s citizens from crime, in this case in the education world.
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#EndCitizensUnited
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FYI, that “doing their homework” remark was an accusation that those who claim Betsy is a CC$$ supporter are lying. We know they are not. Had Stein become POTUS, the whole CBE thing would have had a much higher hurdle to get past, especially since Stein would have used the bully pulpit to educate the citizenry on it’s dangers and flaws. THe deformers are powerful, but not all powerful.
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Reblogged this on TechEducator1.
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Reblogged this on KathyPowers1 and commented:
Rebel? We’ve been rebelling for years. Nothing short of a full-blown revolution will do. There will be many casualties, and some of us will survive. This is more than who will survive with a revolution!
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