Calls and Emails all day Wednesday, August 28th
Keeping this short will be difficult as there is so much information on this issue. However, the real need is for a FLOOD of calls and emails to be made immediately so I will try to keep it simple.
Governor Scott has called a three - day education accountability summit (the 28th is the last day.) Florida’s top education leaders are gathered to discuss state standards for students, school grades, student assessments and teach evaluations.
Evidently Rick Scott is reconsidering Common Core so put the pressure on him now! He is having the FLDOE hold an education summit and it started Monday and lasts 3 days.
Email your comments and suggestions to the summit and they will supposedly read them. Pam Stewart education commissioner is leading this summit and is a Common Core fan so overwhelm the summit with the problems of Common Core!!!!
I am not sure if they will be reading emails on Wednesday (I understand that they did Tuesday.) However, send them anyway and let them know some of your concerns with the implementation of Common Core in Florida.

educationsummit@fldoe.org

In addition, email and phone your comments to Gov. Scott, Senator Gaetz and Representative Weatherford.

Governor Scott:
(850) 488-7146
http://www.flgov.com/

Senator Gaetz:

1-850-897-5747 or toll free: 1-866-450-4366
http://www.flsenate.gov/Senators/s1  (Find his email contact here)

Representative Weatherford

Tally: 1-850-717-5038 or Local Office: 1-813-558-5115
http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/sections/Representatives/details.aspx...   (Find his email contact here)

There are SO MANY issues with Common Core that I hardly know where to start to document them all. Based on the need to act quickly I will provide some basics and ask that you select the items you want from the information below. Then simply state your objection to any further implementation of this FEDERAL program and that the program as it is today is removed as soon as possible.

The program was never approved by Congress (Federal or State), never field tested, implementation began even before the curriculum was complete, initial funding to the states made via Stimulus dollars with strings attached, etc. etc. They say this is only about setting standards it is not!! It is about an entire curriculum change of which so much is extremely concerning.

Materials viewed around the reading of “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison contain graphic language which borders on pornography. (I will not even put out here for you to read.)
In one of the new textbooks: Unit 5 is titled “Building Cultural Bridges” This entire chapter is centered on Global Warming. Not as a possibility with the pros and cons but with a one-sided view. The Chapter contains nonfictional readings and includes the movie “The 11th Hour”. A video: “Global Warming 101”, a film to be viewed titled “The Day After Tomorrow” and the list goes on. When one has completed the course they will be convinced that this is an issue for the world, and believe me when I say that the song “I need to wake up” by Melissa Etheridge is highlighted throughout.
This is not education, this is indoctrination and at worse mind-control. (These are my words)

1. The many problems with the Common Core standards include: (From Florida Against CC)
• Development by unaccountable private groups of copyrighted standards that states were required to adopt verbatim.
• Incentivizing adoption of the standards with federal money and waivers is a violation of the Constitution and three federal laws.
• Adoption by appointed instead of elected officials.
• Florida did not even take advantage of the opportunity to create 15% of their own standards.
• Lack of field testing.
• Florida’s current standards are rated higher in math and just a bit lower in English than Common Core, so it is hard to see how these national standards will solve Florida’s education ills.
• Many other states’ standards were more rigorous than Common Core.
• Very low quality (seventh grade level for the high school math and English standards)
• Developed by five major architects, none of whom have any K-12 classroom experience
• A serious curtailment of literary study that will harm vocabulary development and critical thinking
• Admission by a math author that college readiness is geared to a non-selective community college
• Delay of math skills that will harm acceptance to a selective four year university
• Standards drive curriculum that will be taught in order to pass the high stakes tests (see below), so protests that radical curriculum examples in the official list of text examples for the Common Core English Standards, the federally funded model curriculum, or others are just local aberrations ring hollow.
• According to federal documents, there are plans to teach, test, and collect data on psychological attitudes values and beliefs.
• There is no evidence of international benchmarking, with repeated denial of data requests causing five highly respected academicians to refuse to sign off on the final version of the standards.
• One of the only academic mathematicians on the validation committee believes that students using the Common Core math standards will be two years behind their international peers at the end of eighth grade and farther behind by the end of high school.

1. The federally funded and supervised assessments also have many issues:
• Federal involvement in testing is a violation of federal law.
• The Florida Department of Education has put out false information stating that there is no federal involvement in testing.
• The test results will have many high stakes consequences that include student grade advancement and graduation, teacher pay and tenure and school district grades and funding
• The new assessments will greatly expand time needed for testing, which will decrease instructional time in favor of test preparation and narrow the curriculum to emphasize subjects that can be tested
• Teachers are being forced or at least strongly encouraged to use highly scripted or computerized lessons in order to maximize test results, which reduces teacher flexibility and creativity
• Federal documents show that students will be psychologically tested by the assessments and that individual student data from the assessments will be collected and given to the federal government.
• Because the computerized assessments will determine the next question based on a student’s answer to the previous question, the claim that the national tests will uniformly measure student learning across the country are not valid.
• Claims that districts and teachers will be able to choose and locally implement curriculum of their choice are not logical. Because the stakes for the tests are so high, they will be forced or highly motivated to choose federal model curricula or use the text examples listed in the Common Core English standards.
• Reducing everything a student learns and a teacher teaches to a test result impoverishes education.
• Teachers and students have not had enough time to assimilate the new standards and aligned curricula before the tests are proposed to become high stakes in 2015.
• The costs for implementing the tests are both unaffordable and unsustainable and far outpace what Florida has received in federal grants requiring local tax increases and new federal charges to provide the funds for technology.
• Florida laws passed in the 2013 session requiring the test implementation schedule to be based on “funding, sufficient field and baseline data, access to assessments, instructional alignment, and school district readiness to administer the common core assessments online” as well as adequate and independently verified technological load testing for all districts are being violated.

1. Because teacher evaluations are based on these flawed standards and tests, these cannot be improved until the many problems cited with them above are remedied.
2. The school grading system is problematic because it is also based on the standards and tests. This A-F school grading system had already lost significant credibility. The SBOE, including under the leadership of Tony Bennett, had made it so complicated and arbitrary that parents, teachers, districts and the public were already questioning its validity. Bennett recommended continuing the manipulative practice of preventing school grades from dropping more than one letter grade for a second year in a row. This was in part to cushion the blow from the disastrous implementation of Common Core in the early elementary grades and prevent the department from looking worse than it already did. The board complied after a contentious 4-3 vote on July 16, 2013. Then on July 30, 2013, an AP article reveled evidence that Bennett had already manipulated school grade data in
Indiana, in this case to help a political donor. This evidence and these allegations ultimately resulted in his resignation. If Tony Bennett, as a member of the highly touted Chiefs for Change and one of the greatest Common Core experts and proponents in the entire nation cannot even begin to implement that system without doctoring test and school data in two different states, how can Common Core remain a credible and viable alternative for Florida or any other state?

Given this situation and these many problems, we recommend the following:
1. Florida should withdraw completely from using the Common Core standards. If they are as “voluntary” as proponents claim, there should be no problem in doing so.
2. Ideally, parents and duly elected school boards should control standards, curriculum and assessments. The federal government’s involvement since 1965 and the imposition of state standards and tests via Goals 2000 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (No Child Left Behind) has cost US taxpayers over two trillion dollars while achievement scores have stagnated or declined, the achievement gap is unchanged, state and local sovereignty has eroded, and parents’ rights and data privacy are routinely violated.
3. At the very least, the current Florida standards should be continued as the math standards are already rated higher than Common Core and the English standards are roughly equivalent. The math standards could be improved by aligning them more closely with the standards of the four best state standards – California, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Minnesota. The English standards could be improved by aligning more closely with the best states such as California, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Texas. Dr. Sandra Stotsky has made excellent English standards prepared for consideration in Massachusetts available at no charge.
4. Using a different testing system as suggested by Speaker Weatherford and President Gaetz will not improve the situation if the same flawed standards are implemented in Florida, nor will it cure the significant data privacy problems.
5. The concept of high stakes testing should be reconsidered. Accountability should be to parents and locally elected school boards, not to the state, the federal government, or corporations. A child’s educational experience and a teacher’s performance should not be reduced to one number.
6. The inculcation, monitoring, and data collection of psychosocial attitudes, values and beliefs must cease immediately. That has no place in a free republic. It is the job of families and religious institutions, not government via the schools to do that work.
7. Data privacy protections need to be significantly strengthened. Instead of bills like SB 878 that give our children’s individual data to the federal government without consent, we need real protections such as the ones our group furnished during the last session.
8. There needs to be legislative review of all federal education grants to check for constitutionality, cost and unfunded mandates, state sovereignty, data privacy, and parental rights.
9. The commissioner of education and the state board of education should be elected and not appointed.

Additional Information:

     Here's a great talking point to include against Common Core and the testing required in our current education system in Florida:
      Some kids are being forced into Advanced Placement classes. Even though they don't sign up for them, they are placed in them based on test scores and even when they and their parents request the course be changed, they are denied. Many kids are being placed into at least 2 classes plus all their regular classes. The high school scores are now tied to AP participation and AP pass rates and those participation scores can bump up a school's scores to a higher grade.
      There are AP teachers with 37-40 kids in some of these classes. Some AP teachers are being told to stop their summer assignments next year because these are only high school kids and they need to take it easy on them. AP is supposed to be a college level course but now it starts - to keep the kids in, just dumb it down. The lower kids that don't belong are not going to be able to keep up and teachers are afraid that they will next be told to lessen assignments and bump up grades. They are also being told to tutor the kids so are kids going to be forced into after school study sessions or even Saturday study sessions against their? There are kids in intensive remedial reading classes who are being put in 2 AP classes but can't get out of them. How is someone who can't read for FCAT going to read a college level textbook and understand it? Cramming kids into these elite classes and changing the curriculum will cause the kids who are motivated to not be able to learn as much and possibly not pass the exam which will affect their entrance into college. And teacher's pass rates will drop and cause them to get bad evaluations and either get them fired, cause them to leave the profession, or result in early retirement. AP isn't for everyone but there are some awesome AP teachers out there.

     http://jaxkidsmatter.blogspot.com/2013/08/13-million-florida-studen...
AP testing costs $89 a test and the school gets $8 for every test administered. Follow the money people- it's never about learning.
http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/exam/calendar/190165.html
      OUR tax dollars paying for these tests to be administered and if the kids don't want to be there then they aren't passing. Look at the money a school can bring in by just making the kids take a course and a test. 2000 kids taking AP courses give the school 16,000 dollars. I don't think it costs 16,000 dollars to administer the test so this is free money for the schools.
      I have only touched on some of the issues but believe there is something in here for everyone to use to make their case.

      I received the following today which is disturbing by itself. Let’s just keep changing the school grades for it would not look good if the results were bad. I would much prefer to know the “real” grades based upon the implementation of Common Core but again that might not reflect well.

SCHOOL GRADE POLICY MIGHT BE EXTENDED AGAIN
      The State Board of Education will debate in October whether to extend for another year a plan to keep public schools from dropping by more than a letter grade on their state-issued report cards, interim Education Commissioner Pam Stewart said Tuesday. Her comments to reporters came at an education summit called by Gov. Rick Scott to address school grades and other parts of the state's accountability system. The state board has approved the "safety net" on the report cards for two years now, most recently in July, as public schools implement the nationwide "common core" standards on what students are expected to know. Over the last two years, the board was asked late in the process of calculating grades to approve the policy. "I think when the board voted in the summer, I think it was always the intention that they take it up again when it wasn't such a quick turnaround, but they had time to be thoughtful about it and think about it and do it early. ... I think it's important that our schools and school districts know what the rules are that they're playing with as early as possible in the year," Stewart said. The board voted for the policy by a narrow, 4-3 margin this summer, with some members criticizing it as a move to water down the state system. Stewart said another change could involve whether to consider how long students have been at a school before they are counted toward the grades. (From The News Service of Florida.)

Your support in making these calls and sending emails is critical to the work being done by this educational summit.
Please, do it for the children.
Thank you
God Bless You and May God Bless Our America.
Leanne