NC Conservatives Make Pick Ups In Sheriff Races

Posted on November 13, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

The noise and fury in North Carolina has mainly been about Kay Hagan being defeated and the NC General Assembly keeping it’s super-majority. Let’s peek at the Sheriff races, which yielded a flip in control from Democrat to Republican.

Key points:

This cycle, the GOP picked up 9 and lost 2 spots for a net gain of 7 sheriffs.

In 2012, sheriff positions were in Democrat control by five;  45-55.

In 2014, sheriff positions are now in Republican control by four spots; 52-48.

GOP lost races in the following counties: Alleghany and Franklin.

GOP won races in the following counties: Beaufort, Bladen, Cherokee, Graham, Montgomery, Nash, Pamlico, Scotland, Stanley.

 

UPDATE: Thank you Carolina Plott Hound for linking!

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), ELECTIONS | 5 Comments

Common Core Aligned: iTunes Apps

Posted on November 12, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

CommonCoreAligned“…to create just these kinds of tests—next-generation assessments aligned to the common core. When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching.” – Bill Gates, 2009 Speech To Natl. Conference of State Legislatures

The goal is to align everything so that students and the money have nowhere to go but Common Core.

 

Everyone and their brother is cashing in on online learning. There’s good and bad with that. That includes those rushing to get in on apps and courses for the fundamentally flawed and experimental Common Core.

At Apple’s iTunes, there are 23 “free” Common Core courses:  “Your lessons. Your materials. Together on iPad.”

More of the ‘personalized learning’ theme that has been attempted to be promulgated by Common Core advocates.

Of course, these course are tied to PARCC, which multiple states have dumped:

ASCD has debuted the Common Core Resources Project on iTunes U. The Common Core Resources Project is a curation of instructional resources and assessment sample items that will help educators successfully implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and teach effectively using iPads. The project features 23 iTunes U courses that are free to all educators through ASCD on iTunes U and the ASCD EduCore® site. The courses, designed by teacher teams comprised of Apple Distinguished Educators, members of PARCC Educator Leader Cadres, and ASCD teachers, are focused on CCSS for math and English language arts at each grade level from K–12.
– eschoolnews.com, 11/5/14

 

Whenever something says it’s “free”, I shake my head. Nothing is free.  Parents beware, read the terms of service, privacy policies and related documentation. These apps aren’t made out of the goodness of the creators hearts, they expect a return on investment. You’re being foolish if you think they aren’t using your data somehow.

 

About ASCD
ASCD stands for “Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development”.

Their website lists 1703 North Beauregard St. Alexandria, VA 22311-1714.

They have “affiliates” in the majority of states, as well as outside of the United States.

Their current sponsors include Microsoft, The College Board and Scantron.  Eschoolnews, the same one I excerpted above, is also on their list of sponsors.

ASCD is a 509(a)(2). Their revenue for 2013 on their 2014 990 form showed $50,645,717. According to that filing, their CEO made a total of $880, 484. No one in their listed paid staff made under six figures.  Interesting to see in that same filing, that ASCD is doing “business development in South and East Asia to the tune of over $64k.
See ASCD’s returns here.

There are two Gates “college ready” grants for ASCD; 2011 $3,024,695 and 2013 $244,733.

 

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Common Core | Tagged , | Comments Off on Common Core Aligned: iTunes Apps

Pearson’s Powerschool Redefines Epic Fail In NC

Posted on November 11, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

UPDATE: Welcome Carolina Plott Hound readers!

 

Without argument, Pearson’s Powerschool has been riddled with issues, bugs and complaints. A year later, I am still weeding through the four giant boxes of documents NC DPI sent me on Powerschool after I put in a Freedom of Information Act request.

In my weeding through these documents so far, I’ve got a pile probably 100 pages worth of issues and complaints from education officials, charter schools, superintendents and more. Mind you, I still have one more box to get through.

I don’t have a lot of free time, but this little project just got moved up on the priority scale for me after I had a conversation with my child’s teacher where I learned something rather horrifying things about Powerschool.

Little warning here – you are entering a snark heavy zone.

1. Powerschool is logging every single Common Core move our kids make.
Teachers (at least in Wake County) have to log the score of ‘blackline master’ assessments given on each standard, strand or what-have-you which are given weekly. These scores are what are making up the child’s overall ‘proficiency’ score.

Did you know they were doing that with these ‘blackline master sheets’? Me neither.

DPI insists there are no tests with Common Core. These ‘blackline master’ documents are assessments. Assessments are tests. DPI is so full of crap.

My son is acutely aware he is being tested every week. Perhaps this is why he came home last week and demanded I homeschool him for Third grade.

His words, not mine: “there are too many tests.”

Gee, ya think? I counted over 95 assessments in 3rd grade alone in Wake County. What the bleepity bleep??! When do the teachers teach??

2. Related to Powerschool logging our kids moves.
It appears most teachers are still keeping hand written grade books because Powerschool is such a cluster$#!%.

Why are they doing that?

Powerschool isn’t capturing the scoring correctly apparently or it is altering how one score impacts another. Whatever the problem is,  scores entered are not producing the right final score for the child.

Teachers are manually having to go in and fix the grades… IF, in their copious free time, they can figure out which standard in Powerschool triggers the correction they need.

We’ve just redefined the term ‘epic fail’.

3. Our teacher mentioned that they hate how common core ‘jumps around’.
The kids are being jerked back and forth in math.

They are taught one concept, but then before they can master it and do related tasks, they are yanked into learning something totally different.

Our teacher hinted that they follow the progression they know makes sense and blows off the common core schedule. Good. For. Them.

Now for the Punchline:
As a parent of an elementary aged child, I STILL DON’T HAVE ACCESS THREE YEARS AFTER ROLL OUT.

The first two years, we elementary parents had no access because the system ‘wasn’t ready’ for us yet.

I can’t tell you how incredibly comforting it was that I was unable to see all the data being collected on my kid in Kindergarten and First Grade, especially under Common Core.

This year, no one at DPI or WCPSS apparently knows anything about where I can go to bring my application for parent access.

DPI/WCPSS say take the application to your school.

Our school says ‘we know nothing’ about Powerschool applications. Ask DPI/WCPSS.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat. 

I am just so thrilled that international money-making machine, Pearson, has incorporated my kid into a data sets in their massive and very specific national database,  that they will turn around and use to make even more money with.  

So excited! I always wanted my kid to be a set of data points that some giant company would make money off of!  NOT.

Can I throw up now?

Enough. We, as parents, need to refuse any more of this crap.

I’d encourage other parents out there having issues with Powerschool to reach out to their General Assembly representation. We’re headed into the long session. I am sure the General Assembly would be interested in the millions we’ve spent on this three-ring circus and the frustrations and revelations of the public over Powerschool like the ones I’ve unloaded here.

Related Reading:

Posted in Common Core, EDUCATION, Wake County School Board | Tagged | 2 Comments

Hey, Remember NCAE’s ‘Member-Led’ Group? Organize 2020?

Posted on November 10, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

From time to time, I check back on certain stories to see what’s going on. I’ve been documenting a lot of politicking in our public schools in NC lately, so I thought I’d take a peek at Organize 2020 again.

The NCAE has claimed that Organize 2020 is their ‘member-led’ group, which the NCAE made into a caucus last year.  I checked out their website. Most of it was the same, a few things changed:

I noticed something on their “Actions” page that I hadn’t seen before. It probably had been there a while, but somehow I didn’t spot it before now.  Under the ‘Find more information’ section on the “Actions” page the first link is: “What is Neo-liberalism?”

Uh, say what?

We’ll get to ‘Neo-Liberalism in a bit, let’s stay on the link from Organize 2020.

That “What is Neo-liberalism” link takes you to the Educreations page for Durham teacher Holly Jordan.

You might remember Ms. Jordan and her Moral Monday social justice  education speech and her subsequent arrest record. Maybe you remember her from her LGBT activism in Durham schools or from her checking to see if you’re a racist.

There’s a video on Jordan’s page.

The video is just over 20 something minutes long and chock full of bullshit narratives, including the recent favorite of those who are logic challenged — the demonization of Christopher Columbus as a mass genocide perpetrator by applying modern morality to something that happens centuries ago.

A bit about “Neo-Liberalism”
Neo-liberalism is basically the same liberalism we’ve seen since 1960 or so, but now the liberals are now worried about the economy and free market that they’ve been trashing for decades. To be more specific, neo-liberalism is more about the liberals are worried about how the economy is impacting their social justice activism.

I don’t think whoever made this video ‘gets’ what neo-liberalism really about.  The creator of the video quotes a main idea of libertarianism as being the main idea of ne0-liberalism. That’s perhaps because neo-liberalism could arguably be described as a bastardized Marxist version of libertarianism.

One slide near the end makes the comment that the “NCAE is in a period of transition right now, though…”, that they have lost their ‘seat at the table’ and their membership is declining big time. GEE, wonder why!

As a parent, I’d be pretty concerned by what these Organize 2020 teachers are espousing. The net-net of the video seems to be ‘unions are the answer’, “we need to build a union”, Teach for America sucks, and Oh, woes us.

I can tell, you’re just shocked right? It’s no wonder homeschooling is booming.

Shorter: Neo-liberalism is a hot mess.

So is the NCAE and Organize 2020.

Posted in EDUCATION, NCAE, Organize2020 | Comments Off on Hey, Remember NCAE’s ‘Member-Led’ Group? Organize 2020?

A lot of Spin on NC Spin Post-Election Episode

Posted on November 8, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

NCSPIN Upside DownThe amount of spin by Chris Fitzsimon in this episode is worth watching.  John Locke’s Becki Gray does a nice job redirecting some of his comments.

The idea that this election was a refutation by voters of Obama’s policies was undeniable.

Pay attention to the question at the 15:30ish mark.

Near the end (23:30ish) bond referendum votes come up.
Near the 24:50 mark, the Wake County Commissioner race comes up. I urge people to pay attention to this part. The purse for Wake county has been handed to Moral Monday candidates who have already floated the idea of raises taxes.

Watch:

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), ELECTIONS, POLITICS NC, Video | Tagged | Comments Off on A lot of Spin on NC Spin Post-Election Episode

Spit-Take Of The Week: NC Superintendent’s “Vision” For NC Education

Posted on November 8, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

Is the romance of Common Core fading?

 “In her remarks, she described a vision for moving away from a “one-size-fits-all” to a more personalized approach to teaching, to a strategy of awarding credit based on “mastery” learning rather than seat time, and the use of project-based learning.”
–Herald Sun, 11/6/14,N.C. Superintendent Describes Vision For Education

 

No, given the rewrite of the standards going on in NC, it more likely we’ve entered cover your ass meets obfuscation mode.

Wonka CommonCoreStandardsWHAT A JOKE. 
Dr. Atkinson has rammed the one-size-fits-all Common Core down the throat of this state’s children and parents for four years.

This isn’t a ‘vision’.

Atkinson is simply returning to her old mantra of ‘personalization‘.

Why now? Well, it sounds good, right?

Gee, what a coincidence that Bill Gates is pushing ‘personalization’ too.  Making sure all the technology aligns is the backdoor for keeping the Common Core.

By the way, for those who don’t know this, the Common Core was created (in part) by two DC trade groups — The National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).

These two associations hold the copyright on the Common Core standards.

AtkinsonPresElectYes. The standards are COPYRIGHTED.


Fun fact: Dr. Atkinson was made President Elect of the CCSSO as of Fall 2013.  

Not a single news outlet in North Carolina has reported that major conflict of interest.

By the same token, shame on the Herald Sun for not calling Atkinson out on her comments here conflicting with the last four years of her Common Core pushing.

In fact, the article is DEVOID of Common Core.

 

While Atkinson’s comment on ‘one-size’fits’all’ was spit-take inducing, the main thrust of the article ensured my coffee went cold. The article talks mostly about her rejection of A-F grades. Here’s an example:

She also advocated for moving away from assigning grades of “A” through “F” because she said “it’s gotten to the point” where students work to get the grades and “it matters not what they have learned.”
–Herald Sun, 11/6/14,N.C. Superintendent Describes Vision For Education

Dr. Atkinson doesn’t want that nasty, simple A-F system. It’s not Common Core aligned!

It will ruin her precious data that NC’s statewide longitudinal database cranks out to appease the data overlords at the Dept. of Education and other entities still unknown.

The Common Core machine demands that our overlords must have their data.  They must track your child from birth through college. If they don’t have their data sets, how can they possibly pigeon-hole our kids into the workforce role they  have decided fits them!?

 

UPDATE 11-15-14:  We have clarification. Our kids weren’t being compared to clothes, just their education expectations. That’s better?

 

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Common Core, June Atkinson | Tagged | Comments Off on Spit-Take Of The Week: NC Superintendent’s “Vision” For NC Education