While the MSM has kept us all preoccupied with their latest hysterics, the gatekeeper, Bill Gates himself, made a tactical move which went almost entirely unnoticed. Let me back up just briefly…
It was the fall of 2012. I had been tasked with presenting new teaching strategies for literacy instruction to my fellow educators, as well as to provide a brief explanation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). A few months before, I had attended a week-long training conference at Columbia University’s Teachers College on their “Reading Workshop” program: it was the latest trend among the frequent emerging trends all too common in the educational sphere, one which I found to be woefully inadequate and enormously over-priced. When you work in education, however, you are often required to endorse a plethora of ill-advised programs. Good girl, Biscuit!
Nevertheless, for this particular presentation, I was at least able to settle a part of my conscience, assured in the superiority of the Common Core State Standards upon which part of my presentation stood. After all, the CCSS had been a state lead, bottom-up movement based on brain-based research and best practices, raising the bar of student achievement across the country, with teachers leading the charge! What was there not to love?
Oh, Booooyyyyy….
I felt so betrayed when I later learned that everything which I had read and which I had been told regarding the Common Core State Standards had been a lie, a scam! I felt like such a fool, like a marionette on strings. (Yes, teachers often have the wool pulled over our eyes too. After all, we lie at the bottom of the food chain.)
As the National Association of Scholars has confirmed and judiciously illuminated, the Common Core State Standards were not state-lead or research-based, nor were the standards developed or written by teachers working in the field. Rather, the CCSS were compiled by a handful of people at Student Achievement Partners, in collaboration with the National Governors Association – who own the copyright to the CCSS – and funded by Bill Gates (Blumenfeld & Newman, 2014, p. 236-237). David Coleman, who co-headed Student Achievement Partners, found a cushy seat as the head of the College Board shortly after completing the CCSS, where he now edits the SAT’s. Coincidence? Nah.
The truly frightening possibility is that the results of early and oft-repeated follies through uncredentialed players which began from the outset of the CCSS project, may plague an entire generation of our children.
“And of course, the Common Core Standards have turned out to be as complicated and obtuse as possible so that no parent can possibly understand them. They were actually written by Coleman’s cadre of young masters of education – full of great intentions, but little, if any, teaching experience” (Blumenfeld & Newman, 2014, p. 238). This video introduction of Coleman at a speaking engagement proves sobering, and if the introduction itself doesn’t freak you out just a bit, skip to the three-minute thirty-seconds mark (3:30). Dr. Duke Pesta of The Birch Society offers another interesting take in a video exposing the monopolistic nature and crony capitalism which bubbles and boils below the surface of the CCSS. I could go on and on, but enough about that for now.
Needless to say, the Common Core State Standards are one hot mess of a creature, one which needs to be caged. Heck! It really needs to be put out of its misery! Alas! – Finally, this year, it looked as though the Common Core State Standards had begun to die off, or so many of us thought… That dadd-burn monster just won’t die!
Just when we thought the monster that is the Common Core State Standards might finally die, Bill Gates, the gatekeeper, re-emerges on scene, breathing new life into the half-dead beast. “After helping to further centralize and dumb down government education with Common Core standards, billionaire globalist Bill Gates has another “education” plan to meddle in your child’s schooling,” writes Alex Newman for Freedom Project Media. Speaking at the October 19, 2017, summit for the Council of the Greater City Schools (CGCS), Gates boldly declared his unwavering support of the CCSS and introduced new plans, new schemes to impose this scam upon America’s school children (and teachers) for the foreseeable future.
“It’s exciting to see how the standards are being brought to life in schools and classrooms. But more needs to be done to fully realize their potential…. Teachers need better curricula and professional development aligned with the Common Core.” Even “after admitting that his previous schemes did not work out as planned, Gates vowed to pour almost $2 billion into everything from ‘new curricula’ to ‘networks of schools that work together… and use data to drive continuous improvement,’” Newman explains. Translated into plain English, this is going to cost you, me, and every other taxpayer more money, wasting our resources on more and more new textbooks in a shame worthy attempt at mobilizing a three-wheeled wagon. I don’t even want to envisage the countless trees that will be sacrificed on the gatekeeper’s alter of CCSS obsession. At the end of the day, what we have here is the same faulty standards, the same faulty results. A donkey has a better chance of success in the Kentucky Derby.
You know, for a man who everyone thinks is sooo smart, he sure is thick!
There are several statements that Bills Gates made that warrant further discussion due to the far-reaching invasion of privacy entailed and Gates’ eagerness to become a data collector, storing the personal formation of each child for future use in a Frankenstein’s Monster yet to come.
Unfortunately, Mr. Gates is already in second place in the matter, 2^nd to our own government bureaucracy. In fact, some of these privacy issues are quite serious. However, for the sake of brevity, I will leave you now, but I leave you with a bit a homework: explore so to discover what type of information the federal government is already seeking on your child, even on your child’s teacher, which can be found in the Student Data Handbook for Elementary, Secondary, and Early Childhood Education (2001 edition). It might get a little spooooooky!
I will return to this subject later this week.
For now, Happy Halloween and God Bless!