House Bill 142 - AN ACT relative to teacher evaluation systems.

The school board shall develop, with the involvement of teachers and principals, for adoption any teacher evaluation and support system to be used in the school district or school for the CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT OF INSTRUCTION. Any teacher evaluation and support system that may be provided by the department of education or approved by the state board of education may serve as a guide and reference to the school district or school. In this paragraph, “teacher” shall have the same meaning as provided in RSA 189:14-a, V. Nothing in this paragraph shall supersede collective bargaining rights under RSA 273-A.

HB 142 is COMMON CORE based because in order to qualify for NCLB Waivers:
"A supplicant state must also implement a statewide teacher-evaluation system that will “inform” personnel decisions (it’s unclear what “inform” means). This evaluation system will be run out of the state’s department of education, which will be a radical change from the localized control present in many states." http://truthinamericaneducation.com/federalized-education/facts-about-the-no-child-left-behind-waivers/

Please tell members of the Senate Committee to kill HB 142. NH does not need Common Core.

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The state oversight of private and parochial education is likely to increase slowly, especially along the lines of uniformity in statistics and records, sanitary inspection, common standards of work, and the enforcement of the attendance laws. In particular, the attitude toward the control of the child is likely to change. Each year the child is coming to belong more and more to the state, and less and less to the parent. - Ellwood P. Cubberley 1909

Do you want to understand Common Core, which is being implemented in our public schools without public input or debate? 

What is Common Core?  Is a national curriculum a good idea? Why do we need online assessments?  Is this going to be expensive?  Why is the federal government funding  student databases, containing 400 data points on each child in order to track him from pre-school through the work force?

Consider this explanation, which was adapted for New Hampshire:

Stop the National Common Core Power Grab: Restore Local Control in NH
 

Or view this slide presentation:

Stop the National Common Core Power Grab: Restore Local Control in NH

Or listen to Stop the National Common Core Power Grab: Restore Local Control in an audio taped explanation by Jane Robbins, J.D., Senior Fellow for American Principles Project.  Click on the sectional links listed below:

1. Origins of the Common Core  (Part 1)

2. Testing Mandates

3. Education Without Representation (Part 2)

4. Sub-Standard Standards

5. Intrusive Data Tracking (Part 3)

6. High Price Tag

7. National Standards Do More Harm Than Good (Part 4)

8. Future Effect of Common Core

9. Where Does All This Lead? (Part 5)

10. Take Action!

WHERE the CONSENSUS for COMMON STATE STANDARDS?

The states did not develop these Common Core standards.

Common Core BYPASSED STATE LEGISLATURES by pushing mandates down to the states through Race to the Top applications and No Child Left Behind Waivers.

Uses PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS to create a new FEDERAL “FRAMEWORK” for REDISTRIBUTION of resources and local tax monies.

Where’s the parent in the public-private partnership?

Parents have NO representation. NO vote. It's TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION.

There is no transparency.  Parents are not being shown what their children will learn under this new online curriculum or its aligned assessments. It's a proprietary curriculum, developed by a cartel which was funded by federal government funds.

Parents don't understand how much private student information is being databased and transferred without their consent to Washington DC under this new program.

PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS function outside our system of checks and balances.  These partnerships are promoting unproven education reform initiatives that financially benefit select companies and private interest groups at taxpayer expense.

N.B.: Private interest groups, or businesses, are not accountable to taxpayers for a return on our investment when we the people pay for their initiatives. These are federal subsidies to private interest groups.

Whether their initiative succeeds or fails, taxpayers lose money and FREEDOM because our voices are left out of the process.  Gone is innovation in this one-size-fits-all curriculum program.

UNDERSTANDING THE FRAMEWORK:

To Review and Understand President Obama’s Education Agenda, go to his own reports:

Obama’s Equity and Excellence Commission Report

http://www.scribd.com/doc/126932675/Equity-Excellence-Commission-Report

Obama’s A Blueprint for Reform

http://www.nagc.org/uploadedFiles/Advocacy/ESEA%20blueprint.pdf

2020 Vision Roadmap written to fulfill Obama’s Education Agenda

http://tnacc.weebly.com/uploads/1/7/7/2/17726361/2020_vision_roadmap_a_pre-k_through_postsecondary_blueprint_for_educational_success.pdf

Obama’s Februrary 2013 State of the Union Speech

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/02/13/president-obamas-2013-state-union

Linda Darling-Hammond

·      President Obama’s campaign education advisor

·      Appointed by Secretary Duncan to the Equity and Excellence Commission (EEC) to examine the impact of school finance on educational opportunity and focus on systems of finance in order to recommend ways in which federal policies could address funding disparities.

·      One of the developers of the radical, pro-Islamic CSCOPE curriculum now being challenged by legislators and parents in Texas

·      In charge of content specifications for Common Core Standards testing (as part of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortia funded through Stimulus Funds). Yet, she is openly opposed to standardized tests.

·      Chair of the Model Standards Committee of the Chief Council of State School Officers (CCSSO). The CCSSO co-produced Common Core with Achieve, Inc. and the National Governor’s Assoc.

·      Co-wrote the 2020 VISION ROADMAP to fulfill President Obama’s education goals. The Roadmap outlines how Common Core should evolve into content standards (think CSCOPE) that should empower the federal governments to negate America’s local school funding system and force the redistribution of local tax money across municipal lines.

2020 Vision Roadmap detains three main objectives:

1. Control education

2. Compel State into resource distribution

3. Direct remedy any failure to comply

Nov. 6, 2012 – Convened a forum and spoke on Capitol Hill for the Opportunity to Learn Agenda which seeks a “federal right” to learn by giving schools equal resources.

Congressman Fattah gave the closing remarks.

The Opportunity to Learn Agenda, via Congressman Fattah, called for the creation of a commission, which is now the Equity and Excellence Commission.

Note: All Governors now have a Commission called the Education and Excellence Commission.  Utah’s was created in 2010. Our research concludes that they were created to fulfill the requirements of the federal EEC.

Background Info

Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA)

·      Former colleague of President Obama during their community organizing days in Chicago and Philadelphia.  Changed his name from Arthur Davenport to Chaka Fattah.  The term “fatah” means “revolutionary struggle” and pays homage ot a Palestinian war between Fatah and Hamas. The Fattah won the Battle of Gaza in 2007 and established a new government.

·      Leading Democrat on the US House Appropriations Committee that sets spending priorities for $1 TRILLION in annual discretionary funds.

·      Feb. 28, 2009 - Met with President Obama on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Urban League and called for the creation of the National Commission on the Opportunity to Learn.  The commission would be charged to examine the impact of school finance on educational opportunity and focus on systems of finance in order to recommend ways in which federal policies could address funding disparities.

·      [Obama created the Equity and Excellence Commission (EEC)  as this commission on February 2011.]

·      Congressman Fattah said, “States would have to quantify disparities that exist today and thereby confess their sins.”

·      Mar. 23, 2009 – Met with Secretary Arne Duncan to advance his proposal for the National Commission on the Opportunity to Learn to explore issues of resource adequacy and equity in learning.

·      May 15, 2009 – Sponsored Student Bill of Rights legislation, H.R. 2451 – the measure calls for States to provide highly effective teachers, early childhood education, college prep curricula and equitable instructional resources to all students who attend public schools.

·      Top Democrat appropriator for science agencies and a leading advocate of STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education. Declared that President Obama has taken “a major stride today to assure American scientific and technical superiority” by establishing the $100 million STEM Master Teacher Corps. This Corp is supposed to grow to 100,000 teachers.

Obama’s Equity and Excellence Commission (EEC)

Immediately following his State of the Union address, Obama’s Equity and Excellence Commission issued it’s report, “For Each ad Every Child” and stated:

“We present a big and bold new vision of the federal role in education.”

“The time has come for bold action by the states—andthe federal government—to redesign and reform the fundingof our nation’s public schools.”

Quotes from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

“We seek to fundamentally shift the federal role.”

“We feel an economic and moral imperative to challenge the status quo.”

“Transformational reform especially takes time in the United States which has more than 100,000 public schools, 49 million K-12 students, more than three million teachers, and 13,800 school districts – all of it largely administered and funded by local governments.  Systemic change, in short, takes time.”

Under “Governing for Equity,” the EEC’s report reads:

“The current system, in which policy and resource decisions are made across 15,000 local school boards, 50 state legislatures and state education agencies, plus three branches of the federal government, is not serving national goals of equity and excellence and is not meeting the needs of far too many children in too many communities.

“Historically, our approach to local control has often make it difficult to achieve funding adequacy and educational equity. Local authority will inevitably remain substantial, but it should operate within a clearer stronger framework that aligns local decisions with state polities and with national commitments to equity and excellence.

“To ensure that every child receives what he or she needs to succeed in school, we require a systemic means of cutting through the red tape that ties up funding streams and personnel.  Governance reforms must ensure coordination and cooperation across federal, state and local agencies. This alignment is critical, for example, when it comes to providing health care and social services to students in our schools. The recent example of governors collaborating* to create the Common Core State Standards is instructive as a collaborative cross governmental model.”

* Collaborating?  The truth is Governors were lured with Stimulus Money and Race to the Top grants and points from the federal government.  Many Governors truly believe they were part of a “consensus” for national standards. However, Common Core was not state-led.

Why should taxpayers be concerned?

New Hampshire taxpayers, and state and local school boards, should be concerned about national standards as the means for Wealth / Resource Redistribution:

Common Core reads like Medicaid. After the federal money to implement it is gone after 2014, it will have the potential to bankrupt states.

What are we doing? Why are we allowing this?

Questions to consider:

·      As Obama’s Equity and Excellence Commission’s recommendations are filtered down through states, will we see ObamaCare-like mandates under Common Core?

·      How high will taxes have to be to cover the costs of mandates in the new federal framework?

·      If parents, schools, local boards, and citizens don’t have a voice in the “new federal framework,” how can taxpayes protect themselves?

·      If parents, schools, local boards, and citizens don’t have a voice in the “new federal framework,” where will we turn when the standards aren’t working for our children?  Or when the federal mandates redistribute our local tax monies and resources in ways we don’t approve of, or in ways that don’t benefit our children?

Retired Judge Norman H. Jackson’s letter to state legislators:

“On January 28, 2013, I released a White Paper pointing out that EEC member Linda Darling-Hammond, wrote in 2012: ‘The Federal Government should compel states to review Inter- and Intra- school resource distribution suing established indicators. States that fail to comply would be subject to withdrawal of Federal funds and the Federal Government would have right to direct remedy the problem.’

I noted that the citizens of Utah and the United States are in for some spectacular surprises including federally controlled education and redistribution of State and school district resources during Obama’s second term.  Common Core was their Outside Game Plan and the EEC is their Inside Game Plan.  Today, their full-court press is on!”

WHEREAS, in July of 2010 four unelected officials in the Executive branch, members of the NH Board of Education, committed our state to participation in the Common Core State Standards Initiative through the federal Race to the Top grant application; and

WHEREAS, this participation required our state to adopt the Common Core standards in K-12 English language arts and mathematics, and to commit to implementing the national SMARTER Balanced (SBAC) assessments, all without legislative oversight and without adequate public input; and

WHEREAS, adoption of Common Core obliterates New Hampshire’s constitutional autonomy over education in English language arts and mathematics, placing control in the hands of the federal government and unaccountable private interests in Washington, DC; and

WHEREAS, the Common Core standards have been evaluated by experts as mediocre at best, and based on questionable philosophies; and

WHEREAS, the Common Core standards will inevitably lead to a national curriculum, in violation of three federal statutes; and

WHEREAS, the Common Core scheme will be expanded to include national standards and curriculum in science, social studies, and other subjects; and

WHEREAS, neither the Common Core standards nor the SBAC assessments were ever piloted to determine their effectiveness; and

WHEREAS, both the Common Core standards and the SBAC tests will impose an enormous unfunded mandate on our state and our local school districts; and

WHEREAS, Common Core is part of a national scheme that includes collection and sharing of massive amounts of personal student and teacher data;

THEREFORE, the state of New Hampshire and local school districts should:

• Withdraw our state from the Common Core State Standards Initiative;
• Withdraw our state from the SBAC assessment scheme, and any other testing aligned with the Common Core standards;
• Prohibit all state officials from entering into any agreement that cedes any measure of control over New Hampshire education to entities outside the state and ensure that all content standards and curriculum decisions are adopted through a transparent district-based process fully accountable to the citizens of New Hampshire and
• Prohibit the collection of personal student data for any non-educational purpose, and the sharing of personal data except with schools or education agencies within the state.