Across
the United States, concerned parents and students are refusing to participate
in new tests aligned with the federal government’s Common Core state standards,
and international journalist and educator Alex Newman could not be more excited
about it.
“The explosive growth of the opt-out movement has been one
extremely encouraging development in a sea of bad news when it comes to
government education in the United States,” Newman told WND. “As more and more
parents and teachers realize what is going on with Common Core, I expect this
movement to continue growing by leaps and bounds.”
Newman, the co-author of “Crimes
of the Educators: How Utopians are Using Government Schools to Destroy
America’s Children,” believes Common Core and its
affiliated tests are not just ineffective but dangerous.
“There is no doubt that this Obama scheme to nationalize
education is designed not to educate children properly, but to shape their
minds with propaganda and reduce their critical thinking abilities for
nefarious purposes,” Newman said. “As we show in our new book (“Crimes of the
Educators”), rather than improve education, Common Core is the next phase in
the education establishment’s destruction of American children. One state
lawmaker with an education degree told me this plot was ‘state-sponsored child
abuse.’ He is right.”
Many parents and students appear to
have reached a similar conclusion, choosing to opt out of the Common Core
tests. For example, nearly
1,000 students in the Portland, Oregon, Public School District have opted out of taking the new Smarter Balanced tests scheduled
for later this month. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) is one
of two federally funded multi-state consortia in charge of developing tests
aligned with Common Core standards.
In Pacific Grove, California, one
mother told
local news station KION that she chose
to withdraw her fifth-grade son from this month’s SBAC test upon discovering
the test would not affect her son’s grades.
The mother also said she didn’t know she was allowed to opt
out until another parent mentioned it. While California parents are allowed to
make that choice, school districts don’t generally mention it to them.
That seems to be the case elsewhere
as well. In Kennebunk, Maine, several
parents complained at a school board meeting that
their district did not make it clear their students had a right to opt out of
the new SBAC test. The assistant superintendent had sent parents a letter
describing the new Common Core-aligned test, but parents claimed the letter
didn’t give information on how to opt out.
Newman, who has written extensively on education issues in
the U.S. and worldwide, said states have different policies on opting out of
the Common Core testing regime. Some claim the exams are mandatory, while
others clearly give parents and students the right to refuse. Regardless of
what a state’s laws are, Newman believes people always have a right to refuse
what he sees as federal encroachment on a child’s education.
“Government does not own your children, so regardless of
what bureaucrats and politicians in some especially radical states say, parents
need to absolutely stand firm to protect their kids and their privacy,” Newman
said. “We cannot allow government to usurp parents’ role in raising children
and making decisions on education or anything else.
“Bureaucrats making lawless threats against parents and
children who refuse to be subjected to this unconstitutional invasion of
privacy are way out of line and need to be held accountable by voters,
taxpayers, and our elected officials. Parents should research the law in their
state carefully, but we must never allow ourselves to be intimidated by these
lawless threats.”
It’s not just parents and students
who oppose Common Core. Some teachers oppose it as well, and in one Seattle
school district, the students are saving their teachers the trouble of
protesting. At Garfield High School, the site of a 2013 testing boycott, roughly
half the juniors have refused to take the new Smarter Balanced tests. Therefore, teachers who oppose the tests have said they
don’t feel the need to protest this time around.
New York State has seemingly been
the center of the opt-out movement. The Washington Post reported
that about 60,000 New York students
refused to take the state’s Common Core-aligned tests last year, and even more
are expected to decline this year.
That anti-Common Core spirit was on
display Tuesday in New Paltz, when more
than 100 students, parents and teachers held a rally to call on families in
their region to boycott the tests.
New York state law makes no
provision for parents to opt out of the tests, although some state lawmakers
want to change that. Assemblyman Dean Murray, a Republican, recently
sponsored a bill to allow students to refuse the
tests without negative consequences.
Newman believes students should refuse Common Core tests
regardless of any threats of punishment, because he sees the alternative as far
worse: a dumbed-down population that lacks privacy.
“These federally funded Common Core tests are being used to
gather unimaginable amounts of private data on your child for the federal
government – records that will follow him or her from ‘cradle to career,’ as
Obama officials put it, and beyond,” Newman warned.
But Newman is encouraged by the opt-out movement, believing
it could stop the education establishment from achieving its goals.
“Because the federally funded national testing regime is so
crucial to both the Orwellian data-mining and the alignment of school curricula
with Common Core, I think the opt-out movement may play a major role in
derailing the whole abomination,” Newman said.
“Parents who love their children and do not want the federal
government creating invasive dossiers on them need to educate themselves and
refuse to participate in this nightmarish scheme foisted on America by an
out-of-control Obama administration. Our children deserve better.”
http://www.wnd.com/2015/04/americans-opting-out-of-common-core-tests-in-droves/
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