#DM7 Article: My Horror At “Something kind of cool”

Posted on August 23, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

This is a reposting of my weekly Da Tech Guy column: My Horror At “Something kind of cool”

By A.P. Dillon

As I tried to write this article, I was alternating between my computer screen and watching my two children playing with their LEGO’s.  I had to watch them after what I just saw. I had to cleanse my mind of lives that will never be, ended in the most horrific ways imaginable.

I sat there just staring at a my computer screen for a long time trying to wrap my head around the latest Planned Parenthood video released by Center for Medical Progress.

I sat and stared, unable to believe what I had just seen and heard.  I didn’t just see that, I couldn’t have. STOP.

I sat and stared some more when I read the Daily Signal article that said over half of Americans still had not heard about these videos.

I’m still sitting here, trying to come up with something to say and my mind is screaming a million things at once. Horror. Sadness. Anger. Too many to list.

I cannot fathom how a human being can find it ‘”something kind of cool” to manipulate the heart of an aborted child into beating. It’s beyond monstrous, it’s not human.

I’m struggling to understand how any society can allow the most defenseless of that society to be harvested like crops in a field and then ripped apart for profit. I understand even less those who claim this activity is for ‘the greater good’ or ‘it’s just tissue’ and is being done ‘in the name of research’.

The comparison to the Nazi’s is an oft over-used and hyperbolic one, however, not so in this case. This is the same mentality just with modern, sound bite styled rationalizations.

“There are times when after the procedure is done that the heart actually is still beating.”
– Dr. Ben Van Handel, Executive Director of Novogenix Laboratories, LLC

Is America’s heart still there?

I have to believe it is. I have to believe there are more people out there like me — people bewildered and outraged that atrocities like this are happening in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

DM7 small LL1885A.P. Dillon resides in the Triangle area of North Carolina and is the founder of LadyLiberty1885.com.
Her current and past writing can also be found at IJ Review, StopCommonCoreNC.org, Heartland.org and Watchdog Wire NC.
Catch her on Twitter: @LadyLiberty1885

 

 

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885) | Tagged | 1 Comment

You can’t swing a dead cat these days without hitting a Bill Gates non-profit

Posted on August 23, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Bill Gates non-profit…Bill Gates Dead Cat

…Or a former NC Department of Public Instruction (DPI) employee working for a Bill Gates  backed non-profit.

Case in point, Tabitha Grossman of Hope Street Group.

Who is Hope Street Group?

In case you missed my previous articles on Hope Street Group, they are, in a nutshell, a Bill Gates backed non-profit using a ‘Teacher Voice Network’ to continue pushing Common core. They are a resident of what I call the Common Core Potemkin Village.

North Carolina’s Superintendent is quite cozy with Hope Street and has entered NC into a partnership with them in March of this year.

More on that partnership in a separate article. Back to Tabitha Grossman.

Ms. Grossman has been the “National Director for Education Policy and Partnerships” for Hope Street Group since June of 2013. Here is where she was and what she did prior to that, via her LinkedIn resume:

Program Director National Governors Association June 2011 – November 2012 (1 year 6 months)

Senior Policy Analyst National Governors Association September 2008 – June 2011 (2 years 10 months)

Director, Learn and Earn Early College High Schools North Carolina Department of Public Instruction September 2007 – September 2008 (1 year 1 month)Raleigh, NC

Gee, a former NC DPI employee. Grossman’s next step was the National Governor’s Association (NGA) right at about the time Common Core was being created.

According to her NGA bio, she was in the thick of it with Common Core and ‘human capital’:

“she is currently working with governors and their key policy staff to help them assess and address the impact of the Common Core State Standards on human capital policy.”

While at the NGA, Grossman was tasked with training informing Governors about Common Core by providing them talking points, action plans in a report that “was made possible by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.”

Fun footnote: If you read page 24 of that NGA report Grossman was a part of, you’ll see it also mentions the ‘Shared Learning Collaborative. That collaborative was renamed inBloom and went out of business over data privacy concerns not long after it started up and Bill Gates had dumped over $18 million into it.

Oddly enough, the “Director” for Hope Street Group in North Carolina is not a former DPI employee.  Katharine Correll isn’t a teacher and never has been.

From her Hope Street Group  bio:

With a background in educational and social service nonprofit management, Katharine brings expertise in partnership development, stakeholder mobilization, and community organizing to Hope Street Group.

So, basically Correll is a community organizer.  Great!

More about ‘Learn and Earn’
Gee, “Learn and Earn Early College High Schools” is yet another Gates Foundation experiment.  Color me shocked.

The idea was to redesign high schools to line up with postsecondary institutions with the product being more prepared workers. Sound familiar? Ideas like this have floated for decades, but this particular one started back in 2003.

It’s worth noting the US Dept. of Ed is still trying to push this idea as of 2013.

In 2003, Gates gave Easley $11 million for high school ‘redesigning’ that appears to have developed into ‘Learn and Earn’. Check the bottom of the press release and you’ll see a similar cast of characters supporting it as are now supporting Common Core.

We see the ‘Learn and Earn’ branding in the 2009 report about “learn and earn” produced by the Council of Chief State School Officers:

The Gates Foundation invested $1.2 million in early college programs in North Carolina, according to Habit. Legislators also provided $25 million from the state’s general fund. Those funds are used for one year of planning and the first five years of implementation for each school.

Easley named the state’s early college program “Learn and Earn.” Its objective is for at least 95 percent of students enrolled in early college high schools to be academically at-risk, first generation college attendees or economically disadvantaged. (See p.15)

Yes, that’s former Governor Easley mentioned above and “Habit” is Tony Habit of NC New Schools, who is also a Common Core backer and Bill Gates grant recipient.

The current ‘Senior VP of Talent Development” at NC New Schools is Angela Quick. Ms. Quick, like Tabitha Grossman, is also a former DPI employee. Quick was apparently a high-ranking one with the title, ‘Deputy Chief Academic Officer‘.

Quick’s name is all over the multiple boxes of documents I requested from DPI on Common Core.    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Related

Posted in Common Core, EDUCATION, June Atkinson, NC DPI | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

An Update On #CommonCore Potemkin Village Resident: Hope Street Group

Posted on August 21, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

CCSS Equals MoneyThis past June, I wrote a two-part series on the latest resident of the Common Core Potemkin Village: Hope Street Group.

The flavor of Hope Street Group is similar to that of Teach for America and their offshoot, Leadership for Educational Equity.

Quick recap:

  • Founding members have direct ties to the Dept. of Education and McKinsey.
  • Majority of their funding has come from all the big businesses pushing Common Core, namely the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Also, see the The Teacher Common Core Playbook.
  • Creation of a ‘Teacher Voice Networks’ – Main purpose seems to be pro-Common Core/pro-testing/pro-data sound bite machines which will utilize social media to leverage their narratives. Watch out for the buzzword, ‘equity’.
  • NC Dept. of Public Instruction entered into a partnership with Hope Street Group in March, 2015.
  • We’ve already seen the ‘Teacher Voice Network’ in action in NC with ‘just a math teacher’ Kim Arwood and her pal, Trey Ferguson?  Ferguson is one of the new “NC Teacher Voice Network Fellows“.

See my prior articles for more details:

Also see:  The Road to Hell Is Paved by Hope Street

Time for an update
Hope Street Group’s main website currently has an article up that consists of an interview with NC’s Superintendent and the current Council of Chief State School Officers president, Dr. June Atkinson.

The interview centers around the idea of “the role educators have in preparing the next generation of America’s workforce.”  Silly me, I thought educators were supposed to be giving students an education.

Some highlights from the article with some commentary from me below each one:

“Now as state superintendent, I find it very important to have a connection with businesses in North Carolina through the North Carolina Business Committee for Education, through BestNC, and through the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce. It’s important for public education to have business support because business people are also parents. Working with businesses is a way to get a double impact.”

Dr. Atkinson has been singularly minded in regard to ‘connections’ by listening to businesses and think tanks above the parental concerns of the general public.
BEST NC mention is unsurprising.

In fact, after the latest Common Core Academic Standards Review Commission meeting, she had this to say in a video clip embedded at WNCN, “It’s very difficult to move away from a standard for which we hear business and industry and our universities and community college say, ‘these are standards that our children need in order to be successful’.” 

 

“There are many ways that teachers and teacher voice can be used to address educational equity. I believe teachers need to share their voice in their own communities, with their own friends, and with their own sphere of social interaction.”

Define equity.  Define ‘voice’.
It seems to me equity is a buzzword of convenience and voice is any voice that lines up with Dr. Atkinson’s desired narratives – particularly when it comes to Common Core.

 

“Another way teacher voice can help is by using social media in a very professional way. I like Twitter a lot. If we had out 96,000 teachers in North Carolina putting on Twitter at least one success every single week, can you imagine the impact we would have?”

Atkinson likes Twitter a lot?
She must be a glutton for punishment then, since she’s been taking heat from citizens on it and has resorted to condescension in her responses.

Imagine the impact?
Here she is promoting getting teachers on Twitter, yet most of them are afraid to even have a Facebook page for fear they might get fired over a status message? Oh but wait, they’d be tweeting things she approves of, right? That’s not having an impact, that’s propaganda.

 

“The other way is as follows: teachers need to vote. It matters greatly who is elected as local Boards of Education, County Commissioners, General Assembly members, State Supreme Court members, and to the Court of Appeals.”

Is Dr. Atkinson saying teachers don’t vote? Oh no wait, she’s saying it matters that people are elected that will support her agenda items. Never mind.

 

“I see Hope Street’s partnership with NCDPI as an excellent example of pollination. There aren’t enough people in the Department of Public Instruction to pollinate across NC all of the great ideas and great work. I see Hope Street as a being a part of the ‘family of bees.’”

Pollination.  Bees.
Dr. Atkinson looks at Hope Street Group as her pet hive?  Oh dear.

Related:

 

Posted in Common Core, EDUCATION, June Atkinson | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Did News and Observer Do The Free/Reduced Lunch Math?

Posted on August 20, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

At the News and Observer there is an editorial titled, Wake schools are, growing separate and unequal. This Op-Ed was written by Chuck Liddy, a staff photojournalist for the N&O.

Some of you might hit the News and Observer’s paywall trying to access it, but here’s the paragraph where Liddy plants the ‘proof’ of  his Op Ed’s title; Emphasis added is mine:

As reported by The News & Observer’s Keung Hui and David Raynor, Wake is seeing more racial and economic imbalance, with some schools having huge percentages of students in the category of needing free and reduced-price lunches, something virtually all experts know is not good in terms of academic performance. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds do better if they are not isolated among themselves. And the board finds itself with suburban schools that are overwhelmingly white. That’s hardly what leaders had in mind with desegregated schools, which were supposed to expose students to a school “society” that was much like the one in which they’d live and work.

Did you catch that small distinction in language – “category of needing“? Is it needing or just overall expansion of the program?

Folks, the income threshold for Free and Reduced lunches (FRL) has risen for 6 years straight, which has brought more families into eligibility range. I mentioned this in an earlier blog post this week.

For example, from the 2009-10 school year up until the current school year, a family with one child for the Free lunch category has had their income threshold for FRL eligibility raised by $1,222 dollars. $130 of that $1,222 is just since last school year (2014-15).

Reduced price lunch category jumped $185 dollars from last year. The overall increase in eligibility threshold for the reduced price lunch for a family with one child since 2009-10 is $1,739.

The question needs to be asked, are more families taking advantage of the FRL program simply because they now qualify for it?  Is that really showing a diversity issue? Correlation does not equal causation.

That's racistThe unspoken creepiness here is that families are being tracked by their incomes by means of what programs their children are signed up for.

By the same creepy token, if your neighborhood is ‘too white’ as so deemed by the Wake School board, diversity must be thrust upon your district?

Liddy also doesn’t even mention homeschooling or the increased number of charter schools as factors in the changing demographic and socioeconomic landscape. For that matter, the Wake School board doesn’t really seem to be considering why parents are heading for exits. Hint: it’s not because of diversity.

What Liddy does get right is the number of failed ways Wake county school board has had in increasing ‘diversity’, including the wildly unpopular busing scheme.

Related Reading

Wake Busing: A trip down memory lane

WCPSS Hires Single “Office Of Equity Affairs” Staff For $125k

5 GAO workers charged with fraud in obtaining school lunch subsidies

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), EDUCATION, Media Bias, Wake County School Board | 5 Comments

What They’re Saying About Education In NC (8/19/15) – #NCED

Posted on August 18, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

NCED IconSome quick hits this week in education news from around North Carolina.

#1 – Career and College Ready Graduates
SB561 (Career and College Ready Graduates) is being in the House Education committee today.  The bill’s opening text:

AN ACT TO REQUIRE THAT STUDENTS WHO COMPLETE HIGH SCHOOL ARE CAREER AND COLLEGE READY.

Um, ok?
We’ve been under Common Core for three years now, shouldn’t they be ‘Career and College Ready’ if we’re graduating them?

Last year the Department of Public Instruction (DPI)  was raving about NC’s ‘highest ever’ graduation rate. Were those graduates all ‘Career and College Ready’ or not?

The point of SB561 is in section 1, which is to go after remediation rates by lining up Community Colleges and High Schools.

The State Board of Community Colleges, in consultation with the State Board of Education (Boards), shall develop a program for implementation in the 2016-2017 school year that introduces the college developmental mathematics and developmental reading and English curriculums in the high school senior year and provide opportunities for college remediation for students prior to high school graduation through cooperation with community college partners.

A proposed alignment like this would mean bringing Common Core in Community Colleges. Which is already happening. This bill also uses criteria like the Common Core aligned ACT, which recently has engaged in sketchy reporting practices.

Flashback to 2012: Pathway to Prosperity
Flashforward to 2015: Building pathways for community college students
Related: NC Community College System President Testifies In Favor Of Obama’s “Free” Tuition Idea

#2 NC Media Suddenly Notices Common Core Review
After a long pause, local media has started doing articles on the NC Common Core Academic Standards Review Commission (ASRC) tasked with reviewing the standards. Beware of misleading headlines.

News and Observer/Charlotte Observer kicked it off over with weekend an article which I added 10 points of clarification to.

WRAL has an article this morning on the ASRC meeting that was held yesterday. Check out both chairs noting that there needs to be changes made:

“There will be changes. There’s no debate about the need for change,” commission Co-Chairman Andre Peek said.

“This is something that should have been done prior to the adoption of Common Core,” Co-Chairwoman Tammy Covil said.

YES, this activity by the ASRC is the vetting DPI should have done. The ASRC’s work has been uncovering changes that should have been made prior to adoption, especially since DPI received feedback in 2010 that mirrors what the ASRC is finding now.

The ASRC heard testimony  from Carole Ardizonne yesterday, which WRAL mentions:

Academic therapist Carole Ardizzone, who was invited to speak to the commission as an expert, said Common Core sets students up for failure.

“The standards are totally off base,” said Ardizzone, co-founder of Brookstone Schools, a Christian school in Charlotte. “They’re not rigorous; they’re outrageous.”

She cited a first-grade standard that asks 6-year-olds to “write an opinion piece and supply a reason for that opinion.”

Ardizzone advocates “neurological-based learning,” which she said is rooted in beginning with the basics and taking baby steps to build a foundation slowly and solidly.

“If we want children who are good at science math and linguistics by high school, you’re not going to get it by taking high school standards and breaking it down and feeding it to a kindergartner,” she said. “You have to start with what a kindergartner can learn.”

I was unable to be there in person yesterday, but I listened in and live tweeted during Ardizonne’s presentation.

Much of what she presented lines up with complaints from parents about the age and developmental inappropriateness of Common Core, especially in the elementary grades. Ardizonne also commented that the push for ‘tech devices’ in the early grades can impede development in young children.

A key take-away from Ardizonne’s presentation are that teacher training/colleges need to provide instruction on how a child’s brain works and  include biology and cognitive psychology instruction.  Also, that the Common Core standards for elementary do not line up with a child’s biological and neurological capabilities, which is setting kids up to fail.

View the materials and details of the August ASRC meeting.

View ABC11’s article, The Future of Common Core In NC on Shaky Ground
View WUNC’s article, NC Commission Wants Big Changes To Common Core
View WNCN’s article, NC looks to drop Common Core, make standards more rigorous

#3 Free And Reduced Lunch Eligibility
DPI issued a press release on the 2015-16 free and reduced lunch eligibility guidelines.

I looked at last year’s eligibility rates versus the 2015-16 rates.  The chart below represents the change increase of the income eligibility threshold between the two years.

For example, a household with one child can have an income level $130 higher than last year’s income threshold.

This is the 6th year in a row the thresholds have been raised.

HOUSEHOLD SIZE ANNUAL  MONTHLY
FREE REDUCED PRICE FREE REDUCED PRICE
1 $130 $185 $11 $15
2 $260 $370 $21 $30
3 $390 $555 $33 $47
4 $520 $740 $44 $62
5 $650 $925 $54 $77
6 $780 $1,110 $65 $93
7 $910 $1,295 $76 $108
8 $1,040 $1,480 $86 $123

A comparison between the 2009 and the most recently published rate for 2015 shows how much the income thresholds have been raised in the last 7 school years:

HOUSHOLD
SIZE		 ANNUAL  MONTHLY
FREE REDUCED PRICE FREE REDUCED PRICE
1 $1,222 $1,739 $102 $145
2 $1,768 $2,516 $147 $209
3 $2,314 $3,293 $193 $275
4 $2,860 $4,070 $239 $339
5 $3,406 $4,847 $284 $404
6 $3,952 $5,624 $329 $469
7 $4,498 $6,401 $375 $533
8 $5,044 $7,178 $420 $598
For each additional family member, add $546 $777 $45 $65

I have the full data sets for these statistics and those who might be interested can email me for a copy at TheLL1885@gmail.com

 

#4 John Locke Foundation Event hosts BESTNC
Yesterday, the John Locke Foundation’s luncheon featured Brenda Berg of BESTNC. Berg gave a presentation on the importance of bolstering school leadership of Principals and related academic official positions.

It’s worth noting that in 2013, North Carolina State University received a five-year, $4.7 million dollar grant which funds the Northeast Leadership Academy (NELA) to ‘support professional development for principals’.

Rep. Craig Horn as apparently in attendance and tweeted about it, including mention of his related bill:

Another tweet by Policy Watch’s Lindsay Wagner caught my eye:

 

Business not being ‘subject to election cycles’ also means business is not accountable to the public; much like how Common Core came into play.

Business clearly should have a seat at the table when it comes to education, but as I’ve said before, business appears to own that table and all the chairs around it.  Parents again appear to be left out of the conversation.

BESTNC’s finalized “vision” for NC education will be released in a report apparently due out later this year.

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), EDUCATION, Higher Ed, NC Board Of Education, NC DPI, NCGA | Tagged | 1 Comment

NC Community College System President Testifies In Favor Of Obama’s “Free” Tuition Idea

Posted on August 18, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

On August 5th, North Carolina Community College System President, Scott Ralls, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

The content of his testimony, from the title of the written statement, centered on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. What his testimony was actually about was something else.

Upon reviewing his written statement, two sections jumped out at me.

The first one is Ralls seems to be implying that the federal government needs to further intrude into state sovereignty of education.

When you see terms like dual enrollment, keep Common Core in mind.  There is a massive behind the scenes ground game going on right now to align Community Colleges to Common Core. That alignment is worrisome enough, but Ralls also implies the fed needs to track the students:

Community colleges are uniquely positioned, in this regard, as what I like to refer to as the “seam in seamless education.” Wherever possible, I believe, Federal policy and legislation should encourage and incentivize implementation of dual enrollment pathways tightly connected with public schools, and strong statewide articulation agreements between community colleges and universities. Creation of a federal unit record system for Title IV eligible institutions would move us forward accounting for the reality of students moving across multiple institutions.

The other statement that caught my eye was one near the very end of Ralls’ statement and it references America’s College Promise Act:

It is also why our sector applauds the goals of the America’s College Promise Act, which notes not only the unique role of America’s community colleges, but more importantly makes the bold point that accessible postsecondary education beyond high school is today a necessity for family sustaining incomes. In conclusion, we know that America’s community colleges today have to be more than just a gateway to the American dream, we have to build clearer, more direct pathways to those dreams. Your consideration of these points in the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act will help clear some obstacles from those pathways of opportunity.

The America’s College Promise Act (ACPA) is President Obama’s “free” community college idea, as proposed and presented by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) in July.

Ralls equates ACPA with obtaining the American Dream. Funnily enough, the American Dream most of us know is that, if one works hard and doesn’t give up, eventually you can do anything in this country. The American Dream isn’t paid for by the federal government.

Ralls justifies the ACPA as a “necessity for family sustaining incomes“, yet the very funding of it will very likely mean a hit family incomes in the form of taxes.

The authors envision a federal investment of $79.7 billion over the next 10 years to provide free community college tuition to all eligible students. – American Assoc. Of Community Colleges

$79.7 billion over ten years… FROM WHAT REVENUE SOURCE? 

The proposal is vague on the revenue source part:

The legislation provides mandatory, i.e., guaranteed, funding, but it is not “paid for,” meaning that no budgetary reduction or revenue increase has been identified to cover its considerable cost. Until an offset is identified, the legislation does not have a viable path to enactment. – American Assoc. Of Community Colleges

Nothing is free
The formula being used here is 75% Fed, 25% state.  Let’s round the estimate to $80 billion. Where are the states getting their share (roughly $400 million) of their $20 billion obligation from?

Mr. Ralls, on behalf of North Carolina’s Community College System, is supporting
this proposal yet his testimony does not mention where North Carolina would find this matching 25% in funds.

The ACPA represents an immediate boost to the revenue streams of Community Colleges nationwide. It’s also no coincidence that under Common Core, a large majority of students are going to land in one.

Free Program WonkaThey are supporting a proposal that has no idea where it will get the money from and we know there will be data requirements and other strings attached — but it sounds great, right? Because…FREE!!!

‘We  want better access for all students’…
because, why the heck not when you can get other people can pay for it!  Free stuff!!

“Free Stuff”, like paying for college, that’s what some Occupy Wall Street morons asked for and that is what Obama, along with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, are now pushing for right before an election year.  Gee, go figure!
I can hear the drum circle now: This is what Democracy vote buying looks like!

The ACPA is Obamacare for education.  It makes tuition ‘free’ for low-income students and middle class students get a subsidy and the rest of us pay for it.

An appropriate quote to close with:

“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases:
If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
-Ronald Reagan

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Common Core, EDUCATION, Higher Ed | Tagged | 2 Comments