Call to Action: Be Uncommon. End Common Core in NC.
**Editor’s note: This email was recently sent out to Tea Party activists across NC. With the Common Core study committee set to meet in mid-December, now is the time to educate yourself on this issue.
Conservatives across NC oppose Common Core. A broad coalition of groups and individuals are working together to stop Common Core in our state – Stop Common Core NC, NC Federation of Republican Women, Tea Parties, Civitas, John Locke Foundation, elected officials and more.
The NC grassroots have been asked to help our General Assembly end Common Core, and the timing is URGENT.
The NC General Assembly has formed a Common Core Study Committee, which must bring a recommendation to the GA by December of 2014.
We need to help to make two things happen:
1. Have the Study Committee bring their report by May 2014, during the NCGA spring session, so the recommendations may be implemented before the next school year.
2. Have the Committee recommend that the General Assembly pause Common Core.
We must be engaged over the coming months like we have never been engaged before. We stopped the health care exchanges and Medicaid expansion in NC; stopping Common Core is going to require even more of us.
There will be several steps along the way, to include:
-Contacting the Study Committee
-Contacting our own legislators
-Educating the public
-Letters to the editor
-Attending the Committee hearings (first one is mid-December).
Today is Step One.
We know it’s Thanksgiving week. We wouldn’t ask you to engage if it weren’t absolutely necessary. If you can make a few calls or send a few emails on Monday or Tuesday and pass this information along to others, it will have a huge impact and we can come back to it again next week.
ACTION:
1. CONTACT THE STUDY COMMITTEE
Ask them where they stand on Common Core and let them know of your concerns.
SENATORS:
Dan Soucek (Chair): (919) 733-5742, (919) 733-5742, Dan.Soucek@ncleg.net
Chad Barefoot: (919) 715-3036, (919) 715-3036, Chad.Barefoot@ncleg.net
Warren Daniel: (919) 715-7823, (828) 433-0700, Warren.Daniel@ncleg.net
Martin Nesbitt: (919) 715-3001, (828) 252-0490, Martin.Nesbitt@ncleg.net
Buck Newton: (919) 715-3030, (919) 715-3030, Buck.Newton@ncleg.net
Earline Parmon: (919) 733-5620, (336) 767-7395, Earline.Parmon@ncleg.net
Jerry Tillman: (919) 733-5870, (336) 431-5325, Jerry.Tillman@ncleg.net
Tom Apodaca: 919) 733-5745, (828) 696-0574, Tom.Apodaca@ncleg.net
REPRESENTATIVES:
Bryan Holloway (Chair): 919-733-5609, 336-985-0826, Bryan.Holloway@ncleg.net
Marcus Brandon: 919-733-5825, 336-987-3357, Marcus.Brandon@ncleg.net
Tricia Cotham: 919-715-0706, 919-715-0706, Tricia.Cotham@ncleg.net
Jeffrey Elmore: 919-733-5935, Jeffrey.Elmore@ncleg.net
Craig Horn: 99-733-2406, 704-844-9960, Craig.Horn@ncleg.net
Larry Pittman: 919-715-2009, 704-782-3528, Larry.Pittman@ncleg.net
(Larry has already expressed opposition to CC, having introduced a bill to halt it.)
Michael Speciale: 919-733-5853, 252-635-5326, Michael.Speciale@ncleg.net
Tim Moore: 919-733-4838, 704-739-1221, Tim.Moore@ncleg.net
2. CONTACT YOUR LEGISLATORS
Let them know of your concerns. You can find your legislators here.
Note – Our emails to our legislators have more impact when they are personal and individualized, rather than mass produced.
3. JOIN THE FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE for updates
4. JOIN THE STICKY NOTE CAMPAIGN on Friday, November 27
We believe we will stop Common Core in NC, and we are proud to stand alongside you all. More to come – Thank you!
RESOURCES
Stop Common Core NC – Great for information and updates. You can also find your elected officials, including school board members, at the site.
John Locke Foundation’s 60 Questions on Common Core
View Your County’s Test Results:
1. Go to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction website.
2. Under “Highlights”, click on 2012-13 NC READY Accountability Report.
3. When the page in step 2 comes up, look over to the left side of page and click on State, School System (LEA) and School Performance 1997-2013.
4. At this point, you can click on any year but it’s recommended to click on 2012-2013 to get the most current information.
5. There will be a series of drop downs you have to navigate. The first one allows you to choose any School System in the state. For the second one, scroll down and click “LEA Results”. The third one lets you choose subject – “Math and Reading Composite” is recommended. The fourth one lets you choose grade – “Composite, Grade 3 through 8″ is recommended. The last one lets you choose type of assessment – choosing “ALL” is recommended.
6. Click on “View Report” and see the results.
Be UnCommon.
End Common Core in North Carolina.
What, specifically, is their problem with Common Core? Do they offer any alternatives?
In a nutshell, the excessive data collection, the pigeon holing of students, the “one size fits all” mentality, the lack of local control and options, and the incredibly sub-par standards.
Professors Milgram and Stotsky were members of Common Core’s validation committee, which was charged with reviewing each successive draft of the standards, but they both refused to sign off on the academic quality of the national standards.
You can read one of their reports at this link, and the same site has many others.
Lowering the Bar: How Common Core Math Fails to Prepare Students for STEM
As for alternatives, what we already had was better, though far from good.
The problem with modern education is that it is a system designed in the industrial age to create compliant automatons who can regurgitate information over the short term. We take kids, stick them in a room, tell them to be still and shut up, and teachers act as lecturers spewing facts that the kids are expected to spit back out.
There is little emphasis on learning, critical thinking, general life skills, etc. The entire “what grade are you in” system is crazy. Kids have different interests and learn at different rates. I’m a firm believer in a more “teacher as motivator” approach where kids are free to pursue their own interests with wild abandon. With technology this is vastly achievable. By the time kids leave “high school” they should already be trained and capable of a career with the option of whether or not to pursue higher education.
Frankly, our current system holds back the achievers, and doesn’t do enough for those who struggle.
Do I have all the answers? Of course not. I’m not running for school board. I just know that what we have now is failing…not due to lack of money, but because the system is pretty much designed to fail. Common Core doesn’t change the system, it just lowers the standards.
Here is a great example of a family that gets it.
Alabama Homeschooling family sends six of ten children to college by age twelve.
They do love diversity in education save where it comes to diversity of opinion.
For example see what the Holder DOJ is doing to families in Louisiana who dare to try to leave the public school system with the vouchers made available by the state.
Holder is more concerned about politics and unions than about children. Links abound – here’s one.
http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/ameliahamilton/victory-for-louisiana-school-vouchers.
I’m not educated enough to truly comment here, but I’ve read a couple of articles that report many of the “schools” in Louisiana have less than ten kids, are based in someone’s home, follow no curriculum, and teach whatever they want. Now, that’s fine by me IF they do NOT receive tax dollars, but they ARE getting this money if they use the vouchers as I have read is happening. I can’t attest to the validity of these articles or what’s actually going on down there, but I could easily see unscrupulous people setting up “schools” simply to get money from the system and then duping idiotic parents into sending their kids to them.
I wonder if that’s any worse than what the givernment does with our taxes. That take it, convert it to their own uses, but if you do it, it’s called stealing. No, I’d take my chances with the parents knowing where their money and children are going.
Well then the answer that solves both your worries and mine is to, of course, get tax dollars out of education all together.
I hadn’t heard that Kayser, but even if true, the results are speaking for themselves. If we end up with better results, for less money, I don’t really care if two kids are getting schooled in a poolside cabana. Your point about getting tax dollars completely out is well taken though.
I don’t know that sending a twelve year old to college is a good idea regardless of how smart the child is.
From a social perspective you have a point, but the real point being made is that we waste an awful lot of time, money, and effort on a K to 12 system. As pointed out, these are just normal kids, not high IQ geniuses. They, and I believe most kids, are capable of advancing much faster than the current system allows when not restricted to “grade level corriculum”.
I was horribly bored in school. I had a lot of interests that were shunned and not allowed to develop. I wanted more math and science and less literature. I wanted to be an aerospace engineer and I think if I had been allowed to follow my interests while my brain was still a sponge I could have done it. Instead I wasted a lot of hours in classes learning (and promptly forgetting) how to diagram a sentence. I bet we leave a lot of potential untapped out there.
I don’t think they even diagram sentences anymore. School is more socialization than learning. Look at ETV. In the 60’s it was spelling, reading and math. Today it’s all about acceptance and relationships.
I agree with all you say. I also agree govco edumacation is not at all what a true education could be. And, I agree a lot of folks could, would, and do, teach their children better the public schools.
I was just referencing the link you pasted and the ages of these children. A 12 year old is simply not ready for the non-classroom expectations of college, even at a Christian school like Faulkner U. Proper socialization – and I mean the good kind of learning how to behave around one’s peers – is just as important if not more so, than books smarts. On top of that it cannot be taught from a book; it must be experienced (as in trial and error) in real time in order to develop the proper decision-making skills. I don’t know, I just don’t think it would be good to throw a 12 year old in with a bunch of 18 – 19 year old’s.
And yes, we do leave a lot of potential wasted and untapped.
Here’s another study which discusses the lack of English skills taught in Common Core.
” Contrary to the Common Core State Standards themselves, Common Core-based tests developed and released by the NC Department of Public Instruction include relatively few English language questions and no traditional grammar, spelling, mechanics, or usage questions.”
Here is the link:
Goodbye, Grammar: N.C.’s Common Core-based English tests disregard grammar, spelling, mechanics, and usage
Here’s a thought, do away with standardized testing altogether and let the market determine what schools are doing a good job and which aren’t.
In the interim, testing to measure doesn’t do you much good unless everyone is taking the same test.
I actually agree with that. Unfortunately with too many kids trapped in government schools they are assigned to, there is little chance for the market competition you suggest.
I would love to get the government out of all administration related aspects of education. Give every parent the 8,000 bucks a year we spend now (or whatever it is) and let them choose a school to go to. Lots of different schools, catering to different interests and different types of students would be created and they would be competing with eachother for the dollars. Teachers would see a big benefit here. Good ones will be highly compensated.
What a thought – a classroom of 20 students and $160,000 per classroom to fund it with. It makes one understand how charter schools are making it. It also makes you understand why the CMS adminstration and school board had to be taken to court to pay the money over.
Hey guys. I’m a left of center Democrat, but I agree with you on this. Thanks for the links and information. You are absolutely right about this issue. Arne Duncan is the worst Education Secretary ever. I know people on all sides of the political spectrum who are opposed to Common Core, so I still think it can be defeated.
Thanks for the comment. I appreciate you chiming in. You are correct in this not being a “partisan” issue.
Looks like the study committee meeting is set for December 17. Get those emails sent!
Anyone ask Thom Tillis what he thinks of Common Core?