Dr. Susan Berry
Breitbart.com
Big Government
6 Jul 2014
Where states are failing to repeal the controversial Common Core standards, many parents have decided to take matters into their own hands and petition their local school districts to drop the nationalized standards and replace them with others of their choosing.
In Rhode Island, Smithfield parent Rema Tomka has organized a group of other local concerned parents who have joined a larger anti-Common Core group called “Collapse the Core.” Tomka and her group have signed almost 200 people to a petition calling for their school district to opt out of the Common Core standards…
…In addition, Tomka, a homeschooling parent, and two other vocal Common Core opponents – all registered as Independents – are among ten individuals who have declared their intent to run for three open School Committee seats in November. Daniel Snowman, a physics professor at Rhode Island College and a classroom teacher for over 20 years, and Jennifer Blanchette are also running for the School Committee….
…“Our petition is the big news in Rhode Island right now – I don’t know of anything else that is going on,” Tomka said. “If we can’t work from the bottom up I’m not sure what other options we have. There is no way that Gov. Chafee and Commissioner Gist will get rid of Common Core.”…
…The Common Core standards are a federally promoted education initiative introduced in the Obama administration’s 2009 stimulus bill through a competitive grant program called Race to the Top (RttT). States could apply and compete for federal grant money as long as they adopted a set of uniform standards and aligned curricula and testing that allow for a greater role of government in education, student data collection, and teacher evaluations based on student performance on assessments aligned with the standards.
Rhode Island received a $75 million Race to the Top grant after it agreed to adopt the common standards…
Read the entire article at Big Government.
Related: Time for Congress to Investigate Bill Gates’ Coup
The story about Bill Gates’ swift and silent takeover of American education is startling. His role and the role of the U.S. Department of Education in drafting and imposing the Common Core standards on almost every state should be investigated by Congress.
The idea that the richest man in America can purchase and — working closely with the U.S. Department of Education — impose new and untested academic standards on the nation’s public schools is a national scandal. A Congressional investigation is warranted.
The close involvement of Arne Duncan raises questions about whether the law was broken…
