In 1969, hippies and the Vietnam War were abstractions to me, glimpses from photos in an occasional Life Magazine. I had not heard about the Weathermen.
I was twelve years old. In the following year my main source of normalcy and inspiration—my school day--would be turned upside down. I would go to a high school where riots and the threats of riots were commonplace.
Anti-American forces were at work to bring down America.
While I was worrying about junior high school, Larry Grathwohl, who had just come back to Cincinnati from Vietnam, was infiltrating the domestic terrorist group Weatherman, the only one to have done so. Larry saved potentially hundreds of lives when he alerted the FBI to a bomb placed near a Detroit police station and a restaurant.
Bill Ayers, Education Secretary of Weatherman, told him that in the revolution, lives would have to be sacrificed.
This week I have been traveling with Larry and Tina Trent, who have helped republish Larry’s memoir Bringing Down America, about his days with the domestic terrorists. Tina tells the story as we speak to various groups in Florida this week about how she happened to read Larry’s book in high school in the late 1970s. It was the one truthful one amidst a growing collection already devoted to hagiographies of the 1960s radicals in the library.
My interest in Bill Ayers began a few years ago when I learned about his career as a “Distinguished Professor of Education.” In reality he was working to destroy everything that was good about our education system. Ayers, after escaping punishment in 1980, used his position at the University of Illinois at Chicago, to spread his revolutionary ideas throughout the educational system--in the classes he taught, the books and articles he wrote, the conferences he attended, the dissertation committees he sat on, and the political connections he fostered with Barack Obama and Arne Duncan on the Annenberg Challenge.
One of the things that has encouraged me as we’ve talked to these groups is the awareness of Obama and Duncan’s education plan called Common Core. This is a complete federal power grab with an agenda in line with the educational aims of Bill Ayers. The last refuge of conservatives for education, homeschooling and private schools, will effectively be eliminated under Common Core.
I have no evidence directly connecting Bill Ayers to the writing of Common Core, but I do have evidence that Bill Ayers is still very influential in educational circles crafting the project. As I noted in my report for Accuracy in Media, in 2009, Bill Ayers was a keynote speaker at a Washington, D.C., education conference, alongside Arne Duncan, his Under Secretary, and a representative from Achieve, a well-connected D.C.-based non-profit credited with being the architect of Common Core. Linda Darling-Hammond, a longtime close associate of Bill Ayers, and Obama’s education transition team leader, is in charge of developing one of the two national tests that will be administered under Common Core.
More recently, Duncan, Darling-Hammond, and Ayers participated in the annual meeting of AERA, the American Educational Research Association, held in San Francisco from April 27 to May 1, 2013. This professional association boasts of over 25,000 members consisting of faculty, researchers, and graduate students who work at universities and colleges, federal and state agencies, school systems, test companies, and non-profit agencies. Ayers used to be vice president for curriculum in the organization.
Ayers was listed in the program as participating in eight activities this year, including a panel discussion called “The Role of Education in the Quest for Freedom,” “Dystopia and Education,” “Social Imagination and Political Activism in Education,” and “Making Comics as Educational Research and Theory” (his book To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher was adapted into a “graphic,” or comic, book in 2010; it is used widely in colleges of education).
Ayers also coauthored and presented a paper with the Marxist professor of education, Peter McLaren, titled “In Memoriam: Hugo Chavez.” Ayers had traveled at least four times to speak in Venezuela to promote his idea of education as “the motor-force of revolution.”
Arne Duncan
The Department of Education bragged about Arne Duncan’s speech at the AERA conference, which appeared to be devoted entirely to sessions advocating social justice and not academics. They did not mention Ayers.
In his address, Duncan talked about the “sea-change” in “assessments” under Common Core. Darling-Hammond’s tests, he said approvingly, would address “deeper learning.” “Diagnostic or formative assessments” will measure “student growth,” and determine whether students are “college-and-career ready.” Much in line with Ayers’s pedagogical strategy, Duncan hailed the forthcoming Assessment 3.0 that “will shift from seat-based learning to competency-based learning.” The “next frontier in assessment research,” said Duncan, is in “non-cognitive skills.”
Why would a school want to measure “non-cognitive skills” and what does this mean? Aren’t students supposed to be tested on their “cognitive skills,” their knowledge in subjects like history and science, and their skills in subject like math and writing?
Welcome to the Brave New World of social and emotional learning. As I noted, Darling-Hammond has served on the board of CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning), based at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Ayers taught. Welcome to the Bill Ayers way of teaching, through emotionally invasive sessions, indoctrination, chaos, and confusion. (I describe this in my new book Bill Ayers: Teaching Revolution.)
It may be called “Assessment 3.0,” but it sounds an awful lot like the “criticism/self-criticism” sessions of the Weathermen Larry Grathwohl has been describing to me and to our audiences.
Weatherman recruited in high schools. Now they’ve essentially entered the Department of Education.
It’s no longer abstract when you can’t hide or remove your children.
For more information on our tour, go to www.bringingdownamerica.com. The site includes an archive of newspaper articles and documents about the Weathermen, compiled by Tina Trent. In it you will see the shameful history of the media endorsing the Weathermen and helping them lie about their violent pasts. If you’d like to have us come speak to your group, contact us. We’ll be in Georgia next month.
Indiana’s new Governor Mike Pence has signed in to law a bill that will “pause’’ the state’s involvement in the nationwide Common Core education agenda. That fact that this is happening in Indiana has some very specific political significance, while the fact that it is happening at all has broad ramifications.
Before getting in to the meaning of Pence’s maneuver, consider some facts about Common Core. Officially named the “Common Core State Standards Initiative,” the agenda is not, itself, about curriculum mandates. It is a set of academic standards that students in the various grade levels are expected to achieve, in the states that have agreed to adopt the standards.
It is also the case that Common Core was created by the Obama Administration, but rather, it is actually an effort that first emerged at the state level, undertaken by state governors and state superintendents of education nationwide. The official sponsoring organizations of the initiative are the National Governor’s Association (“NGA”), and the Council of Chief State School Officers (“CCSO”).
Attempts to impose academic standards on public educators date back to the early 1980’s. In the 1990’s it became a state-driven matter, while The federal No Child Left Behind Act, signed in to law by President George W Bush in January of 2002, required the states to create their own academic standards, and then to achieve them, in order to receive federal education funds.
During the past decade, state Governors and state education Superintendents began to collaborate in an effort to bring uniformity to their respective states’ academic standards, and today, there are three primary organizations that advance the Common Core agenda. The NGA and the CCSO, as noted above, remain as the official sponsoring organizations of the initiative. Separately, a group called Common Core, Inc., a non-profit, 501 (c) 3 organization based in Washington, D.C., writes curriculum (not academic standards) that is intended to help educators comply with Common Core Standards.
Supporters of the Common Core State Standards like to remind people that the initiative receives bipartisan support around the country. This is true - both the right-leaning “Excellence In Education Foundation.” a group headed by former Republican Governor Jeb Bush, and the left-wing American Federation of Teachers, support Common Core. Similarly, both Republican and Democrat Governors - including Governor Butch Otter (R-Idaho), Governor Jerry Brown (D-California), and Governor Duval Patrick (D-Massachusetts), all support the Common Core effort.
But Common Core also receives bipartisan opposition. The conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation, along with libertarian leaning groups like the Pioneer Institute of Boston, opposes the Common Core effort. But so also does Glenda Ritz, a Democrat who currently serves as Indiana’s State Superintendent of Education.
Ritz’ election in the heavily Republican state of Indiana is often cited as evidence of Common Core’s unpopularity. In November of 2012, Ritz unseated Indiana’s incumbent Republican State Superintendent, Dr. Tony Bennett, in part by campaigning against the Common Core initiative and claiming that Indiana’s adoption of the Common Core standards would result in a loss of state sovereignty. Ritz ended up receiving more votes in that election than did the new (and now very popular) Governor Mike Pence – and herein lies the significance f Pence’s latest move.
Mike Pence
But Indiana’s “pause” on Common Core is not merely important for political reasons (it does, in fact, exemplify a sense of cooperation between Democrat Ritz and Republican Pence). It also demonstrates that at least some Americans still have a genuine concern about the federal government taking-over and controlling very intimate areas of our lives. It suggests that some of our fellow Americans still adhere to the wisdom of, say, Thomas Jefferson, who warned of the threat of tyranny from government, instead of buying-in to the naïve and selfish view that President Obama articulated last week in his commencement address to Ohio State University when he admonished graduates to resist those who warn of government tyranny (as if such a thing doesn’t really exist).
But is the Common Core standards agenda to be regarded as “tyranny?” Three separate federal laws prohibit the federal government from dictating educational curriculum content to the nation’s public schools. Yet on President Barack Obama’s watch, there has been a concerted effort within his administration to commandeer the Common Core agenda, and to skirt federal restraints.
Back in 2009 and 2010 when the administration was distributing so-called “stimulus” funds, one of the criteria for public schools to receive funds was for school districts to adopt higher “college and career standards” for students. And it just so happened that, in order to qualify for the stimulus funds, many states chose at that time to adopt the “Common Core” academic standards so they could apply for, and receive the federal funds.
The bipartisan group of Governors and state school Superintendents who support the Common Core agenda undoubtedly has the best of intentions. Yet the inability among elected officials to see how government power can be abused is a problem for both Republicans and Democrats.
The other states’ should follow Indiana’s lead. And after we hit “pause” on Common Core, let’s consider the same for Obamacare.
Is President Obama taking-over our nation’s public schools? Is a United Nations agenda infiltrating America’s K-12 classrooms? No, not exactly. Not Yet. But the so-called “Common Core” public education agenda could be paving the way for some serious trouble.Here are a few basic assumptions that people are making about Common Core – along with the facts of the matter.
Assumption # 1 : “Common Core” is a set of educational curriculum requirements being imposed on the states by the Obama Administration. Technically speaking, this is false. “Common Core,” whose official name is the “Common Core State Standards Initiative,” is not, itself, about curriculum. It is a set of academic standards that students in the various grade levels are expected to achieve. It has not been created by the Obama Administration, but rather, it is actually an effort that first emerged at the state level, undertaken by state governors and state superintendents of education nationwide. The official sponsoring organizations of the initiative are the National Governor’s Association (“NGA”), and the Council of Chief State School Officers (“CCSO”).
Attempts to impose academic standards on public educators date back to the early 1980’s. In the 1990’s it became a state-driven matter, while The federal No Child Left Behind Act, signed in to law by President George W Bush in January of 2002, required the states to create their own academic standards, and then to achieve them, in order to receive federal education funds.
During the past decade, state Governors and state education Superintendents began to collaborate in an effort to bring uniformity to their respective states’ academic standards, and today, there are three primary organizations that advance the Common Core agenda. The NGA and the CCSO, as noted above, remain as the official sponsoring organizations of the initiative. Separately, a group called Common Core, Inc., a non-profit, 501 (c) 3 organization based in Washington, D.C., writes curriculum (not academic standards) that is intended to help educators comply with Common Core Standards.
Assumption #2: The Common Core State Standards Initiative receives bipartisan support around the country. This is true. Both right-leaning and left-leaning individuals and groups across the U.S. support the Common Core initiative. The left-leaning American Federation of Teachers and the Fordham Institute, both champion the Common Core effort, as does the Foundation for Excellence In Education, an organization headed-up by the Republican former Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush. Similarly, both Republican and Democrat Governors - including Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter (R-Idaho), Governor Jerry Brown (D-California), and Governor Duval Patrick (D-Massachusetts), all support the Common Core effort.
Yet just as Common Core receives bipartisan support, it is also subject to bipartisan opposition. The conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation, along with libertarian leaning groups like the Pioneer Institute of Boston, opposes the Common Core effort. Glenda Ritz, a Democrat who currently serves as Indiana’s State Superintendent of Education, also opposes the Common Core initiative.
Ritz’ election in the heavily Republican state of Indiana is often cited as evidence of Common Core’s unpopularity. In November of 2012, Ritz unseated Indiana’s incumbent Republican State Superintendent, Dr. Tony Bennett, in part by campaigning against the Common Core initiative and claiming that Indiana’s adoption of the Common Core standards would result in a loss of state sovereignty. Ritz ended up receiving more votes in that election than did the new (and popular) Governor of Indiana, Mike Pence.
Assumption #3: The Common Core Initiative allows the U.S. Federal Government to directly control educational content nationwide. This is false. However, a scenario like this could come about indirectly.
Federal law prohibits the federal government from dictating educational curriculum content to the nation’s public schools. In fact, according to independent legal research conducted by the Pioneer Institute, no less than three separate statutes prohibit this from happening.
Yet on President Barack Obama’s watch, there has been a concerted effort within his administration to control public education with the Common Core agenda. Back in 2009 and 2010 when the administration was distributing so-called “stimulus” funds, the U.S. Department of Education devised what was called the “Race To The Top” initiative. Public schools could apply for and receive the stimulus money, but they had to meet specific criteria.
One of the criteria was for schools to adopt teacher evaluation procedures (this was a good thing, despite the outrage to the idea from teachers’ unions). Another criteria was for school districts to adopt higher “college and career standards” for students. And it just so happened that, in order to qualify for the stimulus funds, many states chose at that time to adopt the “Common Core” academic standards as a means of qualifying for the funds.
Interestingly, when the state of Massachusetts first applied for the “Race to the Top” stimulus funds in the first round of funds disbursements, the state had not yet officially adopted the Common Core standards, and ended up ranking only 13th among the 17 states that qualified for the “extra” funds. Later, after Massachusetts officially adopted the Common Core academic standards, the state received a #1 ranking when it next applied for the funds.
The lesson from Massachusetts was pretty clear. Adopt Common Core standards, and you’ll get more money from Washington. The Obama Administration could technically and legally mandate educational content to the states, but it has successfully used a “third party entity,” of sorts – the Common Core initiative – to have its way with the states. Given this precedent, it’s not difficult to see how the feds could eventually begin requiring certain types of curriculum for kids nationwide.
Many of the nation’s Governors and state school Superintendents who support Common Core still like to remind their constituents that the initiative is a “state thing,” not a “federal thing” – and, therefore, it’s a good thing. For them, to reject the agenda is to ignore their brilliance.
But all Americans should heed the warning: when a majority of the states begin to all do the same thing in terms of public policy, we, the people, become an easier target for federal control.
My antennae go up whenever any education initiative is associated with radicals, like Bill Ayers. We still don’t know why Bill Ayers was at an education conference with Arne Duncan and a representative from Achieve, the well-connected, Washington-based non-profit organizing this effort to nationalize education.
But once I began investigating the curricula and test questions I learned that sure enough, the rigorous “standards” turned out to be nothing more than efforts to impose a curriculum that will make global citizens out of all American students. Or the kind of curriculum Bill Ayers would like.
Now I learn via Tina Trent that an organization called NALEO (National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials), a pro-amnesty group, co-hosted an event in Los Angeles last month on Common Core.
The NALEO Newsletter announced “NALEO Educational Fund last month co-hosted a national kickoff on the common core state standards, in partnership with the Campaign for High School Equity (CHSE) in Los Angeles.”
They quoted the official line from the Department of Education: “The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a state-led, voluntary effort to establish a single set of educational standards for English-language, arts and mathematics that states can share and adopt. They are designed to ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared for college, employment and success in the global economy.”
Right.
The official propaganda continues: “State leaders, through their membership in the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA) Center, have developed a common core of state standards with the assistance of content specialists and education experts.” Common Core, of course, was passed without legislative approval and usually without legislative knowledge, as happened here in Georgia. That’s why Senator William Ligon introduced a bill to withdraw the state from Common Core standards.
So who are these “content specialists and education experts”? It turns out that they are usually radicals, like Bill Ayers’s “pal” Linda Darling-Hammond who is in charge of developing one of the two sets of the nationally administered tests.
The meeting sponsored by NALEO had the usual suspects, and not any traditional Core Knowledge Curriculum representatives in the tradition of E.D. Hirsch, who advocates learning about the literary classics and history: “The program in Los Angeles included local NALEO members and representatives from the NAACP, the National Indian Education Association (NIEA), the South East Asian Resource Asian Center (SEARAC), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the National Urban League, the Alliance for Excellent Education, the Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).”
Trent, who opposed Georgia’s Hate Crimes bill more than a decade ago, says that these are many of the same radical groups who were pushing for hate crimes legislation. And as with the hate crimes law, non-profits are being empowered by the government to promote Common Core. “In the hate crimes model, non-elected non-profits were given vast powers to advise police and develop procedures for identifying and prosecuting so-called ‘hate,’” says Trent. “What we ended up with was the politicization of justice itself, and a handover of government powers to activist groups with an identity politics agenda.” She warns that Common Core is empowering the same activist groups through the federal educational bureaucracy--hardly a process in accord with our republican, representative form of government.
Common Core, it turns out, is just one more way, as she puts it, that we are “handing over government operations to politically driven non-profits.”
Pro-amnesty non-profit groups have been trying to indoctrinate school children about immigration for a long time now. They fought an Arizona law that prohibited teaching hatred towards certain ethnic groups (primarily white Americans), which a Mexican-American (“Raza studies”) studies curriculum did. Education professors have also been using their classrooms to lobby for amnesty. Common Core, the initiative of Obama’s Department of Education, may be the latest way they are trying to deny the sovereignty of the United States in students’ minds.
This information about NALEO and other groups is one more piece of evidence for opposing Common Core. Do we need any more?
For more information about Common Core, see my website, www.dissidentprof.com, where I have a section on Common Core and links to organizations that are fighting this unconstitutional takeover of education.
Ask any college freshman what he knows about communism and he will likely engage in a word association game.
“The red scare, McCarthyism,” he will blurt out, displaying lessons well-learned from his textbooks and teachers.
One way to go beyond the idea of communism as evidence of paranoia, though, is to recall George Orwell’s Animal Farm. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” will be the phrase students recall. Students seem to get that “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” never works out in reality from this fictional work.
This novel shows how literature can sometimes demonstrate historical realities better than many textbooks.
But with the Obama administration’s unconstitutional program of nationalizing education, students will not likely be able to experience the insights and pleasures of novels, like Orwell’s. In 2009, during the economic “crisis,” states were offered part of the $4.35 billion in stimulus funds in a hurried contest called Race to the Top. After the initial application, they were told that they would have to adhere to national standards and testing called Common Core, sight unseen, and without any legislative input. Forty-eight states signed on initially; today, 45 states are committed to CC—although citizens and teachers are organizing against it.
The standards, now in place for math and English, emphasize “work and career readiness”--that is for workers who see themselves as global citizens unacquainted with their national and cultural heritage. This became apparent as I read the recent article, “Teachers Get Help with Common Core Lessons Through (sic) CPALMS,” at the NPR site. This was also because one of the CPALMS lessons for English/Language Arts was on Animal Farm.
The article explained that as Common-Core aligned assessments and textbooks are being written, the state of Florida is using a federal Race to the Top grant from the Department of Education to develop a site of resources for teachers who are scrambling to adhere to the new standards.
Pinnellas County School Superintendant Mike Grego recently told the Florida State Board of Education that there is “no resistance” to Common Core. At the same time, Florida’s new state superintendant, Tony Bennett, is steamrolling in the curriculum. Bennett, by the way, lost reelection in Indiana, many believe, because of his support for Common Core.
The lack of “resistance” may very well be due to the behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the Department of Education that bypassed state legislatures and public input, often gaining the support of Republicans with vague promises of “rigor” and uniform “standards.” Most in the politically informed Tea Party Manatee audience before whom I spoke on the evening of January 8 were not aware of this federal takeover of education.
Among the points I made are those from my recent report for Accuracy in Media. National tests (being written by close, like-minded colleagues of terrorist-turned-education-professor Bill Ayers, like Stanford education professor Linda Darling-Hammond) will eventually nullify the idea of private schools and even home schools. Some Catholic and other religious schools are already beginning to adopt Common Core standards as they see college entrance exams being written to CC specifications. The 45 participating states are also required to keep data bases of students from “cradle to career”--to use Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s favorite phrase--and submit them to the federal government, in effect making a national database.
Some conservative organizations have protested this unconstitutional power grab by the Department of Education.
But the mandate to replace literature in English classes with “informational texts”—with only half the time allotted to literature, and reduced to only 30 percent by the last two years of high school—caught the attention of even the liberal media. They became alarmed that favorites like To Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye are to be replaced by such things as EPA directives.
Spokesmen tried to alleviate fears. They directed skeptics to the standards: “the Standards require a certain critical content for all students including classic myths and stories from around the world, America’s Founding Documents, foundational American literature, and Shakespeare.” Plus, they “intentionally do not offer a reading list.” David Coleman the well-connected new president of the College Board, which writes and administers college entrance exams, has pointed to these caveats, and repeated the claim that the standards call for evidence-based writing instead of writing based on personal experience and feelings. (See the very funny takedown by the Pioneer Institute’s James Stergios of how the advocate of “close reading,” David Coleman, mixed up Federalist 51 and 10 in an instructional video.)
Animal Farm would seem to fall into the category of classical literature that the bureaucrats and educrats refer to in attempts to mollify critics. Those who wrote the ninth and tenth-grade lesson plans for CPALMS (Collaborate, Plan, Align, Learn, Motivate, Share) seemed to have this in mind. First, the novel is put into the broad category of “fables” from Aesop, with a list of those usually taught to young children like “The Tortoise and the Hare.” In typical Common Core fashion, students are to search out “elements” of a fable and then mechanically fill in a chart that is provided as a hand-out in the lesson plan.
Did anyone consider, though, that the comparison to a fable for preschoolers might be insulting to teenagers? The teacher’s version of the chart has the blanks filled in, with the element of the “problem” described as “Power can make the animals corrupt; they struggle to take care of the farm and with leadership.” The “resolution” is “The farm ends up being worse with the animals in control because of too much power and corruptness by the pigs.” The “moral/lesson” is “Power Corrupts, and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.” (The source for this quotation, the conservative historian Lord Acton, is not mentioned, however.)
All this is very general. And when one compares it to other sample lessons in Common Core and its standards, one sees that it is deliberately so. While one small mention is made in a sheet on the “elements of a fable” that Animal Farm is “satirized Stalinist Communism, in particular, and totalitarianism, in general” it is clear that the novel is to be taught in a historic vacuum. The pointed criticisms of communism are generalized to an indictment of a vague sense of too much “power.”
This exercise recalls one that gave consternation to teachers when they were instructed to read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address without emotion and without providing any historical context. Common Core reduces all “texts” to one level: the Gettysburg Address to the EPA’s Recommended Levels of Insulation. This leveling is demonstrated in another lesson plan at CPALMS that involves the historical young adult novel Kidnapped in Key West, where teachers are told to “avoid giving any background context or instructional guidance at the outset of the lesson while students are reading the text chorally.” This kind of “close reading” presumably “forces students to rely exclusively on the text instead of privileging background knowledge and levels the playing field for all students as they seek to comprehend the text.”
Leveling the playing field is a primary objective of the Obama Department of Education, and Common Core presents a means to do so by encouraging such “close” or “deep” reading. Reading the “text” “chorally,” which Merriam-Webster defines as "sung," implies reading aloud in unison. It ensures that all students, including struggling readers, are brought along with the group. Such objectives are in line with Darling-Hammond’s educational agenda. The former Obama education transition team director is in charge of using $176 in Race-to-the-Top funds to develop tests for one of two consortia and is implementing her “five-dimensional grading rubric” of personal responsibility, social responsibility, communication skills, application of knowledge, and critical and creative thinking. This assessment philosophy had the dubious distinction of placing her Stanford New Schools on California’s list of the lowest-achieving five percent. Now about half of American students will be required to take her tests.
The sample test questions released by her consortia give no indication that acquisition of knowledge is important. As I noted in my other reports, social responsibility is the aim of the new curriculum materials being developed. They follow Arne Duncan’s stated purpose for schools: to be part of the “battle for social justice.”
Many have been fooled by rhetoric that simply repeats the talking points of the Department of Education and the well-connected leftists in the education field who will profit from our tax dollars by selling teacher training, software and hardware, and Common Core-aligned curricula. Bernie Reeves even called David Coleman an “education hero” in American Thinker. I thought it might be a satire, or Newspeak.
Duncan, who worked with Bill Ayers in Chicago on education issues, is on the same page, as is Darling-Hammond. Obama’s signature education initiative has been dubbed “Obama Core” for good reason. It is an Orwellian re-education campaign.
Florida’s sample lesson for teaching, among all things, Animal Farm, provides an illustration of how this is being done.
In 1969, hippies and the Vietnam War were abstractions to me, glimpses from photos in an occasional Life Magazine. I had not heard about the Weathermen.
My interest in Bill Ayers began a few years ago when I learned about his career as a “Distinguished Professor of Education.” In reality he was working to destroy everything that was good about our education system. Ayers, after escaping punishment in 1980, used his position at the University of Illinois at Chicago, to spread his revolutionary ideas throughout the educational system--in the classes he taught, the books and articles he wrote, the conferences he attended, the dissertation committees he sat on, and the political connections he fostered with Barack Obama and Arne Duncan on the Annenberg Challenge.
I have no evidence directly connecting Bill Ayers to the writing of Common Core, but I do have evidence that Bill Ayers is still very influential in educational circles crafting the project. As I noted in my report for Accuracy in Media, in 2009, Bill Ayers was a keynote speaker at a Washington, D.C., education conference, alongside Arne Duncan, his Under Secretary, and a representative from Achieve, a well-connected D.C.-based non-profit credited with being the architect of Common Core. Linda Darling-Hammond, a longtime close associate of Bill Ayers, and Obama’s education transition team leader, is in charge of developing one of the two national tests that will be administered under Common Core.
Welcome to the Brave New World of social and emotional learning. As I noted, Darling-Hammond has served on the board of CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning), based at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Ayers taught. Welcome to the Bill Ayers way of teaching, through emotionally invasive sessions, indoctrination, chaos, and confusion. (I describe this in my new book Bill Ayers: Teaching Revolution.)
It may be called “Assessment 3.0,” but it sounds an awful lot like the “criticism/self-criticism” sessions of the Weathermen Larry Grathwohl has been describing to me and to our audiences.
