A petition with respect to Common Core

This is a plea to the readers of this great news site to educate themselves about the Common Core "State" Standards being implemented in our schools, and to join with the growing numbers of parents and concerned citizens who seek to reverse course and do something better before it's too late for our children and grandchildren.

The petition below is a response to one of the more recent acts of our governor on behalf of implementing Common Core. His executive order is based on facts that are actually a collection of rather sad misinterpretations, distortions and falsehoods being promoted by the advocates of Common Core. The true facts have been and are being unearthed by a large number of reputable researchers and concerned citizens. You can find links to the growing body of evidence below, following the body of this petition.

The issue is NOT whether the Common Core standards have been written and proposed with good intentions or bad. Or even whether the proponents stand to rake in huge profits as our schools are being forced to expend huge sums on its implementation.

The issue is clear once you see the training videos and what they propose to do to the teachers and the kids. The issue is, there is no way the methods being mandated and the teaching materials being proposed will ever achieve anything but the OPPOSITE of the goals stated in the lofty impenetrable academic bureaucratic language of the standards.

The issue is the incredibly, insultingly invasive, intrusive four to five HUNDRED demographic "data points" that our children will have to confess about themselves and their families; the additional "data points" being collected by increasing instrumentation of the children's bodies, seats and classrooms; the unlimited collection of this individually tracked data from pre-kindergarten through employment, and the unrestricted sharing of this data with all sorts of governmental and private entities -- a lot of it for hefty monetary gain, none of which you or your children will ever share in.

Here is the petition. Please share it with as many people as you can, and please send it on to the governor, your legislators and members of the state and local school boards. When you send on this petition, please be sure to include the links listed under "Exhibits."

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Petition Regarding

Executive Order 2013-06
Establishing the Common Core State Standards Steering Committee
signed by Brian Sandoval, the Governor of the State of Nevada 
June 24, 2013
http://gov.nv.gov/News-and-Media/Executive-Orders/2013/EO-_2013-06-Estab...

WHEREAS the premises cited in the Execute Order (EO) are based on incorrect information and baseless claims propagated by the proponents of the so-called Common Core State Standards,

WHEREAS the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have NOT been developed by "48 states, hundreds of experts, thousands of educators," but rather by a private cabal of self-interested agents,

WHEREAS the national and state roll-out of CCSS was done with the same "you have to pass it to find out what's in it" arrogance as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, a.k.a. "obamacare"),

WHEREAS the 45 states that have signed up, have been enticed, duped and coerced into doing so by manipulating their Race To The Top (RttT) and other grants from the US Department of Education,

WHEREAS the governors of Nevada and other states have accepted the terms set by the US Department of Education long BEFORE the Common Core (CC) English and math standards were released,

WHEREAS no governor has personally participated nor has the professional expertise to participate in the actual writing of educational standards,

WHEREAS the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) have NOT actually commissioned nor actually written any of the standards, but rather the CCSS for English and math were presented to them as a finished product and the principal author had to "sell" them on it, and the NGA and the CCSSO merely own the copyright to them,

WHEREAS some of the very experts who had helped write the standards refuse to endorse and recommend them,

WHEREAS the Nevada state board of education (BoE) has incorrectly interpreted law passed by the legislature (2011 SB14, NRS 389.0187) as authority to impose the CC English and math standards on local school boards without seeking out and examining alternative standards that may be more appropriate to the school children of Nevada,

WHEREAS the Nevada Department of Education (DoE) is spending enormous sums -- badly needed elsewhere -- on teams and work groups to assist in the implementation of CCSS,

WHEREAS Nevada's local school districts and other educational institutions have been spending enormous sums -- badly needed elsewhere -- on their own programs to roll out a program imposed by the state BoE and DoE,

WHEREAS there is no objective scientific proof or validation that CCSS will prepare students either for college or career, or provide them with any of the skills expected by prospective employers, which over the years have always consisted of effective communication, proper English grammar, basic math, punctuality and a work ethic, and being a self-starter rather than needing constant supervision and guidance, NONE of which are nurtured by Common Core's emphasis on group work, group-think, denial of right and wrong answers, denial of facts, reducing everything in English and civics to subjective opinions and reducing everything in science and math to consensus, not objective verification,

WHEREAS the Nevada System of Higher Education will be burdened with immeasurably higher costs for remedial courses for entering freshmen, as CCSS kicks in and high school graduates are even farther behind, even less ready for college-level work, than they are now,

WHEREAS the CCSS specifically ignore students with special needs,

WHEREAS law passed by the legislature (2013 AB288) is incorrectly interpreted as requiring that Nevada students submit to testing by the Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and its 400-533 insultingly intrusive personal demographic questions about the students and their families, its tracking of students from pre-kindergarten through employment, and the sharing this data indiscriminately by all sorts of government agencies and private entities,

WHEREAS this level of "testing," data collection and data mining is a gross violation of privacy, expressed explicitly in the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution, section 18 of Article 1 of the Nevada Constitution, and both express and implied in other parts of both Constitutions,

NOW, THEREFORE, exercising the right of petition guaranteed by the Constitutions of the United States and the great State of Nevada, parents and concerned citizens are hereby calling on the Governor to take the only action that is appropriate in this case, to wit:

1. Rescind EO 2013-06 and dissolve the Common Core Standards Steering Committee.

2. Order the Nevada Department of Education to stop all spending on any and all activities related to implementing CCSS for any academic subject.

3. Order Nevada Department of Education and the state board of education NOT to implement the recently released CCSS for science and civics.

4. Order the state board of education to release the local school boards from its requirement to implement CCSS in any subject.

5. Order the state board of education to seek out, study, review and evaluate standards from other states and other countries, and to modify Nevada's pre-existing standards or write new standards that are more appropriate to Nevada's school children. 

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereonto set my hand and caused the keys on my computer's keyboard to commit this petition to electronic form and be distributed to fellow parents and citizens concerned about the welfare of our children, grandchildren and generations thereafter, in Carson City, Nevada on this eighteenth day of October in the year two thousand and thirteen.

Peter Hennessey, Ph.D.
https://peter5427.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/common-core-a-petition-to-dum...
https://peter5427.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/ominous-parallels-obamacare-a...

Exhibits

CC_Coersion_2013_FNL.pdf - Google Drive
https://docs.google.com/file/d/1Ik09d4v3kvBsHVJnId5dT1WsSBaHAZyT5AEIkFS5...

http://arizonansagainstcommoncore.com/AACC_Myths_vs_Facts.pdf

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Common Core: Based on UN Agenda 21, UNESCO Standards
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNeimlu9jxk&feature=youtu.be

Obama's Education Takeover - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLRHZEhGWY8

▶ David Coleman On the Common Core - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76HryWYsDNc&feature=youtu.be

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Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSS) - Services by Pearson
http://commoncore.pearsoned.com/

Achieving the Common Core | Achieve
http://www.achieve.org/achieving-common-core

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Inspirational Teaching Videos: Covering Common Core, Math, Science, English And More
https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/

Common Core makes students scrap Bill of Rights amendments | The Daily Caller
http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/08/common-core-assignment-makes-sixth-gra...

Multiplying Whole Numbers & Fractions 
https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/multiplying-fractions-by-whole-nu...

Exploring Emigration: Cultural Identity
https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/teaching-cultural-identity?fd=1

Literacy in Physics: Reading a Primary Source 
https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/problem-solving-with-technology

Articles: Close Reading Is Close to a Con
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/close_reading_is_close_to_a_con.html

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/10/10/teacher-who-allegedly-urged-student...

http://townhall.com/columnists/KyleOlson/2013/10/11/thirdgraders-learn-t...

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http://www.nevadaracetothetop.org/pdfs/np-final-report.pdf

http://dhhs.nv.gov/HeadStart/Docs/Nevadas_Promise_RTT_ELC%20.pdf

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The Next Generation Science Standards
http://www.nextgenscience.org/next-generation-science-standards

Connections to CCSS-Mathematics (on same page)

Connections to CCSS-Literacy in Science and Technical Subjects (on same page)

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http://eagnews.org/school-districts-in-local-control-states-like-wiscons...

http://myinclinevillage.com/2013/04/18/why-i-am-against-the-common-core-...

Two Moms vs. Common Core | National Review Online
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/347973/two-moms-vs-common-core#!
http://catholicexchange.com/two-moms-vs-common-core/

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http://www.salina.com/1895test/

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