Education for 46 states has been hijacked by the federal government.  Education is not mentioned in the Constitution of the United States, and for good reason. The Founders wanted most aspects of life managed by those who were closest to them, either by state or local government or by families, businesses, and other elements of civil society. Certainly, they saw no role for the federal government in education.

Common Core is a national program for schools.  The 46 states adopted it – not by voting for it – but by accepting money dangled in front of them.  Besides losing local control, this massive program collects data on our children.  The program is expensive to enact, but the big backers are companies standing to benefit greatly because their services are required to implement it.

https://www.inbloom.org/our-vision

You probably didn’t know that Unit 5 and District 87 participated in an experiment through a program called InBloom.  See the above website.  Data on your children is no longer used locally – it could be used by numerous government agencies and private buisnesses:

Educators can use inBloom-compatible applications to track students’ progress and identify learning resources suited to their individual needs. With the right data available to all of the great tools they use, educators can see a complete view of their students, including how students are tracking against national and local learning standards such as the Common Core.

Education technology providers can leverage inBloom to save time and resources that used to be spent building custom connections to each state or district’s technology systems, and can instead focus on delivering great tools for teachers, students and families.

And because inBloom and compatible applications are designed to work together, states and school districts can lower the costs of integrating new products and collaborate more easily with other states and districts using inBloom.

Our Guiding Principles:

• We are dedicated to working on behalf of the public good.
• We recognize the sensitivity of storing student data and place the utmost importance on the privacy and security of that data.
• We ensure availability of and access to inBloom services by creating cost-effective technology services for states and districts of all sizes, and partnering with companies ranging from start-ups to established education technology leaders.
• We are committed to providing all students, regardless of school, race, socioeconomic status, or special learning need, access to the variety of tools and other services inBloom provides.

Participating States & Districts

Nine states have participated in the development and pilot testing of inBloom to ensure the technology meets the needs of states, districts, teachers, students and families. Of these pilot states, five have selected districts to participate in the pilot testing, and six have plans to deploy inBloom and compatible applications more broadly this year:

• Colorado: Jefferson County School District
• Illinois: Unit 5 (Normal, IL) and District 87 (Bloomington, IL)
• Louisiana: State-wide
• Massachusetts: Everett Public Schools
• New York: New York City Department of Education
• North Carolina: Guilford County Schools

Tests are written at the Federal level.  They say local districts still have control of the curriculum, but nobody is going to pass the tests unless teaching is geared to the tests.  Teachers across the country have quit because teaching isn’t teaching anymore.  Worse, Common Core is totally unproven and untested.  Your children are guinea pigs.

It’s not to late to fight back.  Inform other parents, call your legislators, and contact your local school board members!

10 Reasons to Stop Common Core

1. Conflict of Interest: The people that established the Common Core Standards benefit financially from the standards they set up.

2. Movement of Power: The Common Core Standards take power away from families and local schools and give it to the government and business leaders. Keeping the power at the federal level will result in our schools changing their standards each time a new administration steps into office.

3. Reform that relies on Standardized Tests: The Department of Ed has committed 300 million dollars to the creation of these new tests, developed by two consortia (PARCC and Smarter Balanced). There will be little effort to teach skills that are not tested.

4. One Size Fits All Education: 45 states in our nation will be doing exactly the same thing in our schools. What if these new methods don’t work for your child? The new math uses a different way of teaching than most of us grew up with.

5. Drowning Out New Thinkers in Education: Common Core believes it is the answer to education reform. We could miss the opportunity to listen to a new teaching method to help our children learn.

6. Loss of Great Literature: The Common Core Standards recommends that students spend 50% of their time in literature and 50% of their time reading informational text. (Already in my local highschool no fiction is read Freshman year, this was told to me by a retired English teacher)

7. The Influence of Big Money: Education reform should not come from the people in America that make the most money. Common Core Standards were influenced by the Gates Foundation and that money was able to buy a lot of propaganda.

8. Can We Afford All This Change?: The state checkbook is struggling with money during these difficult economic times. How can we afford all the new text books, all the testing, the training, the new resources, etc. Maybe our schools would rather hire a new teacher this year then buy more materials.

9. Teaching Our Children To Be Common: Schools can add only 15% of new material to the set standards. Teachers are forced to stay in a box. Everything the same! Everybody Common! There is something to be said about a teacher that sees great potential in a student and lighting a spark with lessons that were developed for them.

10. Data Collecting: This should be every parents worst fear! Records of physical and mental health, inappropriate behavior, disciplinary actions, test scores, personal information, etc… can now follow your child starting in pre-school to age 20. The information can be shared among government agencies and other private agencies that the school approves. This sharing can be done without your parental consent. This issue is so serious that EPIC (Electronic Privacy Inform Center) is suing the Department of Education.