NM US Senate Race: Closer Than You Think

Posted on November 24, 2014 by Liberty Speaks

Now that the dust has settled, the post-election hang over is gone and the votes have been counted I wish to direct your attention to the New Mexico Senate race.   Yes, I know it has been decided, but it was closer than you think.

Incumbent Senator Tom Udall (D) faced off against businessman Allen Weh (R)  on November 4th and won.  The votes were 286,462 (55.56%) to 229,164 (44.44%).

The sitting Democrat really had nothing to worry about in the blue state of New Mexico.  However, looking back into history at the 2008 election results shows a different scenario.

In 2008, Senator Tom Udall, then a 5 term Congressman was running for the Senate seat held by retiring incumbent Pete Domenici (R) against  incumbent Congressman Steve Pearce.  Ultimately Udall won with  505,128 (61.3%) to Pearce’s 318,522 (38.7%).

In 2008, the Democrats swept most the senate seats to gain a super majority.  We all know this history.   New Mexico would be considered a lost cause in 08.  When asked if the NRSC would be walking away from the New Mexico Race (it was heavily favored to flip Democratic), Senator John Ensign stated to the Wall Street Journal:

“You don’t waste money on races that don’t need it or you can’t win.”

Here is how that map played out amongst New Mexico’s 33 county’s:

08NMSenateCounties

Flipping democratic is exactly what New Mexico did and in a blow out.  23 % points separated the two men and Udall won 21 out of NM’s 33 counties.  Maybe Senator Ensign was right. However, I didn’t feel the Land of Enchantment was a lost cause this time around.

Lets add perspective and go back to the 2012 Senate race in New Mexico. Senator Jeff Bingamin (D)  announced retirement, and the race was on between Martin Heinrich (D) and former Congresswoman Heather Wilson (R).

Heinrich went on to win the seat by 395,717 (51.01%) to Wilson’s 351,260 (45.3%).  Comparing the percentage gap with the 2008 race, this one could be considered a “squeaker”.  Heinrich on won only 14 counties out of the 33.

So why do I feel that Allen Weh not only came close, but could have won the seat from Tom Udall?

The 1st item is the 2014 Senate map listing New Mexico’s 33 County’s and how they voted:

 New_Mexico_Senate_Election_Results_by_County,_2014.svgSenator Udall won 18 county’s, and 15 went to Allen Weh.  2 counties that Udall won back in 2008, flipped to Weh in 2014.

The 2nd item, is that just like the 2008 election, Republicans basically gave up on New Mexico.   Before the first polls were out between Udall and Weh, Americans For Prosperity-New Mexico picked up and left the state in January.  The March poll had Udall up by 23 points, and the September poll wasn’t much different. So was this the Ensign quote coming back to haunt the Republican chances of retaking the New Mexico seat?

The 3rd and final item is that in October the National Republican Senatorial Committee, feeling that NM would not flip,  relocated its focus and money to other Senate races across the country. This was the second time the group had abandoned a New Mexico Senate Race.  After all, it looked like another lost cause.  However, shortly after this announcement new polls came out.  Allen Weh had erased the double-digit deficit to only a 5-7 point difference.  Better late than never, right? Unfortunately, the big guns of the Republican party didn’t think so.

It was clear that New Mexico could have shifted far enough to flip the state red.  Would it have gone to Weh if the money hadn’t been reallocated?  Would Tom Udall still be our Senator if our state had not been abandoned?  The difference between the two election years of 2008 and 2014 is astonishing.  Udall won by 22% points in 2008, but by only 11% this time around.

Something to note from this recent election —  The New Mexico state legislature for the first time in 60 years has a Republican majority.  Our residents WERE READY FOR NEW LEADERSHIP.

So, I have a message to the Republicans in the NRSC as well as groups like Americans for Prosperity for the 2016 Presidential election and the 2018 Senatorial election with Senator Martin Heinrich….

Stay the course in New Mexico, and stay til the end.  We might surprise you.  

 Thanks to Doug Ross @ Journal for linking

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Here Comes The Common Core Curriculum

Posted on November 24, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

“It’s just a set of standards…”

Yeah, right.
The tests are aligned. Now it’s  time to align the curriculum…for ‘free’, of course.

So who is going to align the curriculum?

Meet The K-12 Open Educational Resources Collaborative (K-12 OER).

From the K-12 OER Collaborative site:

“The K-12 OER Collaborative is creating comprehensive, high-quality, open educational resources (OER) supporting Mathematics and English Language Arts aligned with state standards.”

“This project is a state-led collaborative, with support provided by many of the leading non-profits in OER and education.”

“Members include eleven state education agencies, CCSSO, Achieve, Creative Commons, The Learning Accelerator, Lumen Learning, SETDA, and more. See the full list of participants.”

Open Education 2014
The K-12 OER recently held an event called Open Education 2014.

The main draw speakers included CCSSO’s Maureen Wentworth and Karl Nelson. Wentworth is all about the data. Nelson’s Twitter timeline is worth perusing. In that Twitter Timeline, there was this retweet:

Remember, McGraw Hill is listed by name in the Common Core copyright.
Back to the Open Education 2014 details. The last sentence of the opening paragraph for this event is interesting.

“This project is not creating a national curriculum and steps are being taken to ensure it will not be perceived in this way.”

Oh really? What steps?

The same players who brought us the Common Core are behind this ‘collaborative’ and the rest of this event description says the intent is to do away with ‘costly’ textbooks and replace it all with Common Core aligned materials.

The claim made in the event details  that, “These materials will be openly licensed (CC BY), updated annually, aligned to assessments, and available for free in both digital and print format.”

Openly license does not mean open local control, although that is going to be the narrative.

Who updates them annually?
What assessments?
By aligning to specific ones, that arguably forces states to use said assessments.

Further down, more detail of the event with emphasis added:

Specifically, states and districts can transition from expensive and rigidly controlled materials to open educational resources (OER). These new open instructional resources are low-cost and can be accessed and used in distinct and improved ways from traditional materials. Their copyright is structured differently, allowing states and districts to freely and legally change, improve, adapt, make copies, and give away copies of the materials.

So, let’s get this straight…

The Common Core Standards themselves are copyrighted.

These ‘free’ materials will be copyrighted too, but that’s o.k. because they are ‘structured differently’.

Question — Why bother to copyright these materials at all?
Read the RFP associated with creating all of this material that is ‘structured differently’ even though still copyrighted.  A letter of intent was also required.

EdNetInsight broke down the RFP and revealed up to “eight contractors” will be selected:

The K–12 OER Collaborative will be selecting up to eight contractors for the creation of full-course OER in the following areas:
• K–2 English Language Arts/Literacy
• 3–5 English Language Arts/Literacy
• 6–8 English Language Arts/Literacy
• 9–12 English Language Arts/Literacy
• K–5 Mathematics
• 6–8 Mathematics
• 9–11 Mathematics – Integrated/International Pathway (Secondary Mathematics I, II, III)
• 9–11 Mathematics – Traditional Pathway (Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2)

The Collaborative is looking for successful contractors who will create OER that do the following:
• provide a comprehensive set of instructional materials
• align to the Common Core State Standards
• follow the Publishers’ Criteria to ensure the development of aligned content
• include strategies, activities, and resources that allow teachers to differentiate instruction
• include an assessment suite, including performance tasks with student work examples, formative assessment guidance, unit-level summative assessments, and rubrics to help teachers understand and interpret student performance

All education resources created in response to this RFP must be released under the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY) version 4.0. The resources will be evaluated by teams of educators from the participating states according to a number of well-established rubrics.

Content developers interested in applying to become a K-12 OER Collaborative contractor must complete the “Letter of Intent” form here: http://goo.gl/forms/gohdUxE5Gw by January 9, 2015. Projects whose Letter of Intent meets the project criteria will receive a full proposal package via email.

Remember the K-12 OER Collaborative’s message to us:

“This project is not creating a national curriculum and steps are being taken to ensure it will not be perceived in this way.”

Tell me again how this isn’t creating a national curriculum when we have this RFP by an unaccountable, unelected entity that is working in conjunction with those who brought us Common Core and that is going to select 8 contractors to create Common Core aligned ‘free’ and ‘differently structured’ copyrighted materials based on a copyrighted set of standards? Don’t forget, the Common Core aligned assessments also have to be factored in.

Perception is everything.
Make it look open and free, yet it’s not, because it’s all tied right back to Common Core.
We have led the masses to the promised land by deception.

 

The Textbooks
Curriculum formation is all for not unless you control the textbooks, which The Learning Accelerator  appears to be doing in coordination with K-12 OER Collaborative:

A group of 11 states and a gaggle of education organizations have banded together to make textbook publishers relatively obsolete by creating curriculum offered to schools and districts for free.

The K-12 Open Educational Resources Collaborative, coordinated by Cupertino nonprofit the Learning Accelerator, includes California, Arizona, Nevada, Minnesota and the State Instructional Materials Review Association, among other states and agencies.

The content will be aligned with the new Common Core standards, although the announcement made this week didn’t mention them, given a backlash against the standards in various corners of the country. – SFGate, 11/21/14, Coalition of 11 states take on textbook publishers

The Learning Accelerator has received two Gates Foundation grants to date; each for $750k in 2012 and 2013.

The 2013 grant is for ‘blended learning’ in support of the Gates Foundation’s “NextGen Systems Initiative“.  The Hewlett Foundation dumped $1.4 million into this initiative for ‘technology tools’ to assist students with ‘personalized’ learning to become ‘career and college ready’.

 

Lumen Learning
One of the partners of the K-12 OER is Lumen Learning.

Lumen Learning wants to cut text costs by making everything ‘open’ and digital.
Lumen started by through trying to transform Community College texts via the NextGen Systems Initiative grant. Recognize that grant? It’s the same one we just saw Learning Accelerator getting money for earlier in this article.  What a coincidence!

Lumen Learning is the creation of Professor David Wiley.

Fun fact – David Wiley is the registrant listed for K-12 OER’s website:

Registrant Name:David Wiley
Registrant Organization:
Registrant Street: 738 E 1000 N
Registrant City:Pleasant Grove
Registrant State/Province:Utah
Registrant Postal Code:84062
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.8017010311
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email:david.wiley@gmail.com

 

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Common Core | Tagged | 3 Comments

#DM7 Article: There’s A Lot Of Weapons Grade Stupid Out There

Posted on November 23, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

This is a repost of my weekly Da Tech Guy column: There’s A Lot Of Weapons Grade Stupid Out There

By A.P. Dillon

Maybe it is age creeping up on me, but I can’t help but feel there as been an increase in the level of dumb stuff going out there in the world.  I can’t help but feel at times that the movie Idiocracy is really a documentary — or at least will be treated as one in not so distant the future.

There just seems to be a lot of weapons grade stupid out there these days and I’m not just talking about Common Core math.

There’s all kinds of stupid, mind you.

Like a former White House fellow suggesting that journalists should have their personal lives put on display; essentially blackmailing the press.
Too late. Some of the powers that be have already been down a very similar path.

Then there’s the stupid seen in the increasing feminist assaults on anything that might have a hint testosterone in it.

Just take a look at this lunacy – a man who helped land on a comet gets assaulted by feminists who say his shirt is sexist.  Not kidding. This happened.

The story then becomes the guy’s shirt and not the feat of landing a probe on a comet.  A FREAKING COMET!  Voila, #shirtstorm is born!

These women have serious priority issues and apparently incurable tunnel vision. My God, this made me embarrassed to be female. But wait, it got worse.

The man then apologized for his shirt.
Excuse me?
The apology should be TO him, not FROM him.

Related to #shirtstorm, we have a large kettle of stupid brewing over men growing beards.

Apparently, ‘beard culture’ has arisen despite men having grown beards since the dawn of time.  Now, brace yourself because the stupid gets stronger here. Not only is ‘beard culture’ considered toxic, it is part and parcel of being ‘Lumbersexual’.

I hear you asking it. WTF is ‘Lumbersexual’? I just can’t go there without laughing, so I refer you to Twitchy and Brandon Morse:

 

I found that Brandon’s timeline on Twitter is a wealth of information on the amount stupid flowing out there.  Morse has everything from PETA stealing and killing a family’s pet  to Topless feminists shoving crucifixes up their butt to protest God in his timeline.

Moving on…because if I don’t, I might lose it before I wrap this article up.

Finally, there’s stupid and then there’s dumbstruck.  If you’re an American voter, you might be too dumb to understand this portion of the article. Read slowly.

Just ask Bob Scheiffer about Jonathan Gruber.

Don’t ask Nancy Pelosi or President Obama though, they’ve never heard of this guy Gruber. According to President Obama, he just heard about Gruber’s comments and this guy Gruber never worked on his staff.

Got that? None of it matters, the guy wasn’t on Obama’s staff. Weak.

Well. come on now…Give him a break, guys!  He’s the President of the free world and he needs time to catch up on the news of what’s going on with his own signature law.  The President has made it clear he gets most of his information from the press. Let’s help out with some headlines:

Dear America,
Stupid is as stupid does.  Right?

 

 

If you enjoyed this article, you should really check out other pieces written by Da Tech Guy’s Magnificent Seven writers and maybe hit that tip jar!

AP DillonA.P. Dillon (Lady Liberty 1885), is a Conservative minded wife and mother living in the Triangle area of North Carolina. A.P. Dillon founded the blog LadyLiberty1885.com in 2009. After the 2012 election, she added an Instapundit style blog called The ConMom Blog. Mrs. Dillon recently participated in Glenn Beck’sWe Will Not Conform. Mrs. Dillon’s writing, in addition to Da Tech Guy’s Magnificent 7, can also be found at StopCommonCoreNC.org, WatchdogWireNC and WizBang. Non-political writing projects include science fiction novellas that are, as of yet, unpublished. Her current writing project is a children’s book series.

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Jeb Bush Wants Opposition to Can It, Be More Like China.

Posted on November 22, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

Jeb Bush, you can wave goodbye to 2016 if you’re going to use passive-aggressive constructs like the apolo-attack on Common Core critics that you used in your keynote address this week.  The excerpt below is just flowery shutuppery.

​”​This is why the debate over the Common Core State Standards has been troubling. I respect those who have weighed in on all sides of this issue. Nobody in this debate has a bad motive. But let’s take a step back from this debate for a second. This morning over 213 million Chinese students went to school, and nobody debated whether academic expectations should be lowered in order to protect the students’ self-esteem. Yet in Orange County, Florida, that exact debate did occur. And so the school board voted to make it impossible for a student to receive a grade below a 50. You get 50 out of 100 just for showing up and signing your name. This was done, and I quote here from a local official, so the students “do not lose all hope.”​ – Truth in American Education, Jeb Bush Will Go Down Swinging On Common Core

Shorter: All you parents out there need to shut up. We know what’s best for our workforce….err, your kids.

Comparing our students and schools to the Chinese and their schools is like comparing apples to wrenches.   Perhaps Mr. Bush should consult with someone who knows that school in China is like first hand? How about a Chinese Mom’s Common Core Warning and Comparison To Communist China?

 

More: Jeb Bush Defends Common Core Standards

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See What ‘Just standards’ Looks Like for A Second Grader

Posted on November 22, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

The pro-Common Core Mantra: “It’s just a set of standards.”

See what my child has been doing in Common Core math. My kid is good at math, but is being forced to learn multiple strategies regardless of what works best for him. Then he has to ‘explain’ them in writing.

These documents I’m talking about were created by Wake County Schools.  This is Common Core aligned curriculum and yes, the kids have to do it the ‘Common Core way’.

Note the first two pages are ONE document, which had a front and back side.

Now imagine you’re the parent on the receiving end trying to help your kid with a very BASIC concept, yet the emphasis isn’t on the basics.The emphasis is on making the kids write out ‘how they know’ multiple strategies work.

Dr. Scheik on the Academic Standard Review Committee said these standards were ridiculous for the average parent or layperson to decipher. Looking at what has been coming home shows Dr. Scheik is spot-on.

Note the terminology used in the directions like the “Addition with partners of 100” page.  I had my child read the directions aloud:

“Solve each equation. Justify the solution using a different model for each equation.”

I then asked my kid if he understood the direction. He shook his head no and asked me what justify and solution meant. Imagine that’s a kid with no homework help in sight.
These documents seem to be written for adults, not kids.

Parents in North Carolina need to be aware that the standard line from NC’s Superintendent has been that there are no tests with Common Core. I’ve come to find out that’s not really true.

Each of the standards is being assessed as the kids do them. In the case of Wake county, each assessment is logged in Powerschool to form the child’s overall grade.

 

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

So, Who Showed Up To Excellence In Ed’s Annual Event?

Posted on November 21, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

Jeb Bush’s Excellence in Ed held its 2014 Summit this week.

Welcome to a “really good fight”.

Jeb BushThe guy who is pushing a one size fits all experiment which is locking states and schools across the country into one set of fundamentally flawed and experimental standards is talking about ‘school choice’.

That’s rich.

 

The sponsor list was a who’s who of Common Core profiteers.  While the sponsors were listed, the attendees were not.  Come on, show us the list, Excellence In Ed:

A number of big names showed up —  big political names. Gee, this isn’t a dual purpose summit, now is it? 2016….

Education equality? Like the one size fits all Common Core? Notice the first big words on top of the poster?

By the way, for North Carolina readers, Rep. Craig Horn was there.  Rep. Horn was a co-sponsor of the repeal common core bill.

“Justice”, “Right To Rise”, “Civil Rights”.

Was this a Union event or an education summit? And “zip code”?? Was this banner backdrop supposed to be a Close Reading assignment or something?  Good grief.

 

The room was packed. Citizens should find out if any of their state officials were there, including legislators.

 

A funny thing happened, it appears media was not allowed to attend the panels. There’s that Common Core transparency we’ve all come to know!

Quick Reminder:

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