Posts Tagged ‘Common Core’

Common Core Gores Education

Saturday, November 15th, 2014

Common Core Gores Education

[The quotes are from “Common Core – A Look Behind the Wizard’s Curtain” by Karen Hadley, in The Hard Truth Magazine, Issue 4, 2014. We highly recommend it.]

We have written previously (here and here) about the dangers of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. If you have children in school, you may want to find out more about this, and take some action to stop it.

“The players behind Common Core have worked hard to create the impression that this project will be the salvation of education in America. But it is always a liability to lie in PR … this national restructuring of American education was embedded in President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 … [which] was used to bribe the states to commit to new standards of education — sight unseen.”

“Nor is it any surprise that the primary creators of the curriculum refer to the Common Core competencies as ‘cognitive and psychological aptitudes’. In short, we’ve finally turned our educational system over to the psychologists lock, stock and barrel.”

“It is only a short step to the Guidance Counselor or psychiatrist on staff who can diagnose the child with ADHD (using the test developed by a company that was recently acquired by Pearson, the Common Core curriculum publisher) and prescriptions may be written and dispensed on the spot, without parents ever knowing.”

It is not just the psychiatric industry in collusion here; it is also the psychology industry. Psychiatric drugs are not the only harmful danger with respect to Common Core. “…there are two characteristics to this initiative that make it among the most serious and fearsome: 1. its utter pervasiveness and 2. its ability to mold the minds and opinions of our children and destroy any concept of sexual morality, as well as their will to learn and succeed.”

Children worldwide are under extremely dangerous assault. Today, parents and teachers are being deceived in the name of improved mental health and better education. The results are devastating. From the beginning of the 20th century in Germany, psychologists and psychiatrists have targeted education to destroy free will. Psychological intervention in schools promotes harmful behaviorist programs such as embodied in Common Core. Academic, knowledge-based curricula have been jettisoned in favor of psychological manipulation that places emotions and beliefs above educational outcomes.

As if that were not enough, the current psychiatric push for mandatory “mental illness screening” of all schoolchildren has Nazi roots that parents and teachers ignore at their own peril. These psychological programs have trampled on the rights and roles of parents and have provided society with rising crime, drug abuse and suicide rates.

Using “gun violence” as its cover, the Obama administration has quietly unleashed a cache of federal dollars that will be used for testing students for signs of mental health issues in K-12 schools.

On Sept. 22, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell announced $99 million in new federal grants to school districts for mental health services. On Sept. 23, the U.S. Department of Education announced another $70 million in “School Climate Transformation grants;” more than half of the money to be used for “behavioral outcomes.”

These governmental “mental health” programs and “Common Core should strike deep terror into the hearts of every parent, grandparent and American.” Find Out! Fight Back! Contact your state board of education, your legislators, your school principal, superintendent, and school board and let them know what you think. Let us know what you have done.

Download and read this free CCHR publication for more information: “Harming Youth — Psychiatry Destroys Young Minds — Report and recommendations on harmful mental health assessments, evaluations, and programs within our schools.“

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter | No Comments »

Common Core Controversy Continued

Thursday, August 1st, 2013

Common Core Controversy Continued

Opposition to the Common Core State Standards is growing

Four states — Texas, Virginia, Alaska, and Nebraska — have not adopted the Common Core State Standards for public school curricula and testing. Minnesota chose to adopt only the English standards and declined the Mathematics standards.

Nine states which had previously adopted the Standards — Missouri, Kansas, Michigan, Georgia, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Alabama, South Carolina, Utah — are having second thoughts about it in one form or another. For example, in Missouri:

HB 616 “Prohibits the State Board of Education from adopting and implementing the standards for public schools developed by the Common Core Standards Initiative” was introduced by Representative Kurt Bahr (R-102) although it did not come to a vote during the legislative session just ended.
SB 210 “Requires the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to hold public meetings in each congressional district on the Common Core State Standards” was introduced by Senator John Lamping (R-24) although it did not come to a final vote during the legislative session just ended.

In May, the Texas House of Representatives voted 140-2 to pass language prohibiting Texas from participating in the standards. Texas, however, has never adopted the standards and likely will not.

One flaw of Common Core seems to be around the assessment tests, and the maxim that “what gets tested gets taught.”

Critics also say that the whole Common Core effort is a backdoor way of establishing a national school curriculum, taking educational decisions away from the states. Amendment X to the Constitution of the United States, states that, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This is taken to mean, in this context, that a national educational curriculum mandate is in violation of the Constitution. Of course, proponents of Common Core point out that these Standards are developed and run by the states, not by the federal government. On the other hand, opponents of Common Core consider it as an end-run around having a federally mandated curriculum; in other words, while it is not officially a federal mandate, there are most certainly federal incentives (read “federal dollars”) for those states who implement it.

Without going any further into the pros and cons of the Common Core Standards themselves, we do want to watch out, however, for the first step down a fast slide toward the federal government telling teachers what should go on in their classrooms, and the conversion of schools and classrooms into the mental health clinics that the White House seems to desperately desire.

The President’s Fiscal Year 2014 Budget includes $205 million for programs to help identify children’s mental health concerns, improve access to mental health services and “support safer school environments,” including $55 million for Project AWARE (Advancing Wellness and Resilience in Education) to provide Mental Health “First Aid” training in schools and communities and to help school districts and their communities work together to ensure that students with mental health issues are referred to the services they need; $50 million to train 5,000 new mental health professionals to serve students and young adults, including social workers, counselors, psychologists, and other mental health professionals; and $25 million for Healthy Transitions, a new competitive grant to help support transitioning youth (ages 16-25) and their families access and navigate behavioral health treatment systems.

The federal government is even now working out how existing group health plans that offer mental health services must cover them at parity under the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008. In addition, the Affordable Care Act requires all new small group and individual plans to cover mental health.

For more information about the dangers of mandated mental health insurance coverage, download and read the CCHR report “The Vital Case Against Mandated Mental Health Parity.”

For more information about harmful psychiatric influences in education, download the CCHR report “Harming Youth — Psychiatry Destroys Young Minds — Report and recommendations on harmful mental health  assessments, evaluations, and programs within our schools.”


As a result of psychiatric and psychological intervention in schools, harmful behaviorist programs and psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs now decimate our schools. These programs have trampled on the rights and roles of parents and have provided society with rising crime, drug abuse and suicide rates.

Contact your local, state and federal representatives and let them know what you think about turning our schools into mental health clinics and turning our children into mental health patients.

Forward this newsletter to your family, friends and associates and recommend that they subscribe.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter | 1 Comment »

Common Core Controversy

Sunday, July 28th, 2013

Common Core Controversy

The Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) is a set of educational standards for each grade level (K-12) that are intended to provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so that teachers and parents know what they need to do to help their students and children. There are currently only standards for Math and English, and they incorporate both content and skills standards.

The official authors, publishers and copyright holders of the Common Core State Standards are the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Since its inception in 2008, forty-five states, the District of Columbia, four territories, and the Department of Defense Education Activity have adopted the Common Core State Standards.

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon and Commissioner of Education Chris L. Nicastro, with the approval of the State Board of Education, signed a Memorandum of Agreement in 2009 permitting Missouri to work with other states on the development of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts and mathematics. The Missouri State Board of Education (not the Missouri legislature) adopted the Common Core State Standards on June 15, 2010 with full implementation expected during the school year 2014-15.

There will be a new set of assessment tests aligned with the Common Core Standards. Because the tests are computer-based, schools will need adequate computer technology and bandwidth available to conduct the assessments.

Both ACT and the SAT have announced that these tests will become aligned with the Common Core State Standards.

Missouri has allied itself with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium to develop the Common Core assessment tests for Math and English, which will replace the current Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) tests for these subject areas.

There are a number of groups opposing this initiative for a variety of reasons, including ParentalRights.org, MissouriEducationWatchdog.com, MOAgainstCommonCore.webs.com, The American Principles Project, Concerned Women of America, National Coalition of Organized Women, UtahnsAgainstCommonCore.com, and PioneerInstitute.org.

While CCHR does not particularly endorse nor oppose CCSSI, there may be ramifications in the mental health field about which you may wish to know.

The main objection voiced that might relate to CCHR interests is that these standards raise the prospect of privacy violations and data mining of private student information. The fear is that this data could include such items as family income, religion, family voting history, mental health screenings, and disciplinary actions. (In fact, current data reporting already includes disciplinary actions.)

Currently the Missouri Department of Education collects 119 data points for each student. These are a combination of requirements from Missouri state law, Missouri state Department of Education, court rulings, federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, federal Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act, and federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

While the Common Core Standards officially do not contain data collection or reporting requirements, the means of assessing students and the data that results from those assessments are up to the discretion of each state. There is also a separate data collection effort called the Common Core of Data which is a program of the U.S. Department of Education, although this ostensibly uses aggregate statistics only and not individually identifiable information.

A less well-known, hard to find and disturbing bit of information comes from the CCSSI co-author Council of Chief State School Officers web site, which lists one of its prime principles as “Continued Commitment to Disaggregation,” referring to making the data collection and reporting systems provide more data that is tied to individuals rather than aggregated solely as statistics.

In a 2009 interview with Charlie Rose, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan advocated having healthcare clinics associated with schools. He also indicated that schools should be the center of community life and be open 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, 12 months a year. When not operating strictly as a school, they should be partnered with community service organizations to operate the facilities and hold various programs.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a Fact Sheet January 19, 2012 called “Unlocking the Power of Education Data for All Americans,” announcing a number of public and private data collection and reporting initiatives.

It is certainly no secret that the White House strongly supports mental health efforts in schools. Quoting from the White House blog:

“The budget supports initiatives to help teachers and other adults identify early signs of mental health problems and refer young people to services they may need, and to advance new state-based strategies to prevent young people ages 16 to 25 with mental health or substance abuse problems from falling through the cracks when they leave home. The budget will help 8,000 schools implement evidence-based behavioral practices to improve school climate and behavioral outcomes for all students.”

We’re not particularly prone to cry “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” having stirred up enough fireless smoke ourselves. All we’re really saying here is, there might be something to watch about all this — dig a little deeper when the news media says how wonderful some new program is, especially if it involves an area already infiltrated by the psychiatric industry such as education.

For more information about harmful psychiatric influences in education, download the CCHR report “Harming Youth — Psychiatry Destroys Young Minds — Report and recommendations on harmful mental health assessments, evaluations, and programs within our schools.”

Tags:, ,
Posted in Big Muddy River Newsletter | No Comments »