Application Of Common core Should Raise Your Dander

Although not happening in all school districts throughout Illinois at the same time or to the same degree, several similar practices have being reported in school districts across the nation. Some might already be the norm, or might soon be the norm, in your Illinois school district where teachers are in the initial stages of employing Common Core standards to guide what skills students learn, not only when, but how.

• Many great literary works won't be read or taught at all. The move is away from classics and toward informational texts such as government documents. When reading a classic speech such as Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, students will be told to mediate on how they feel about the text and then asked to relate it to social justice. Ignored will be the virtues of honor, moral truths, right and wrong, etc., so prevalent in classic literature as revealed in their contents. In other words, students will be encouraged to think like a socialist with texts that foster extreme leftist ideology.  

• Changing emphasis on historical events. Why Pearl Harbor should be remembered seems obvious to most of us.  Consider the opening page of the slim chapter in one approved Common Core textbook devoted to World War II called "War Shock", which features a photograph of a woman inspecting a large stockpile of thousand-pound bomb castings.  As stated:  The entire section is littered with questions and plenty of photos that show the destruction of Hiroshima.  Just in case students would be inclined to take the American side in this conflict, the editors see to it that teachers will remind the students repeatedly that there are two sides in every war.

• A new interest in religion - just everything else but Christianity or Judaism. In California, a Common Core book used in middle school ("History Alive") has an entire 65-page chapter devoted to the History of Islam which glorifies Islam and Muhammad where before there was only one page devoted to Islam, while the text about the history of Christianity and the church has been decreased.

• Math concepts taught at different age levels. In Math, multiplication is being  moved from second grade to third and algebra is being pushed into the high school.  Calculus is no longer a requirement, even though calculus is required at the college level. http://pioneerinstitute.org/news/lowering-the-bar-how-common-core-math-fails-to-prepare-students-for-stern-
  

• Student and family privacy tossed out. In the privacy realm:  It has been revealed that non-academic, personal information is being collected through the Common Core testing consortia about students and their parents, including family income, parents' political affiliation, their religion, and students' disciplinary records -- all without parental consent.
  
  
• Exhorbitant costs to school budgets. Regarding cost to Illinois:  Official estimates indicate that for every $1 in federal funding states will receive from adopting Common Core, they'll have to spend $4 to implement it.  It's much higher here in Illinois.  Implementation of Common Core will cost $799 million, with federal awards totaling $66 million.  This means Illinois will lose $733 million.   As a federal incentive to sign on to Common Core in 2010, Illinois is the big loser financially, as are young people education-wise.  

• Cost passed on to taxpayers. The cost to school districts is projected to reach $166 million nationwide over the next five years.  This year state lawmakers experienced a sticker shock when PARC and SBAC rolled out its new tests which were twice as expensive on the average -as were previous tests -- $22 to $27 per test.  With 67% of the Illinois' local districts operating at a deficit, one study shows Common Core implementation could cost local school districts $773 million over the next seven years.