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College & Career Ready Standards, Common Core State Standards, Curriculum, Data Mining, ESEA, Home School, MACHE, Minnesota Department of Education, Pearson, World's Best Workforce

MACC CALL TO ACTION! ESSA Federal Grant Hearing

July 12, 2017 educationwatchdog Leave a comment

MACC CALL TO ACTION: ESSA Federal Grant Hearing

MDE’s DANGEROUS STATE PLAN for ESSA Act FEDERAL GRANT
LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE HEARING
Wednesday, July 19, 2017, 1:00 – 3:00pm, Room 5, State Office Building, St. Paul

NOW: Email House Education Committee Chairs:
Rep. Sondra Erickson rep.sondra.erickson@house.mn
Sen. Eric Pratt sen.eric.pratt@senate.mn

Tell them “NO” to the “MCA student failure labeling” when parents refuse the federally-aligned tests.

Opting out is a parent’s prerogative to protest the adoption of federalized standards, curriculum, data collection and aligned testing. To mandate the federal tests for ALL students is to close the FINAL DOOR ON LOCAL CONTROL, thus federalizing our Minnesota schools and contradicting our own state law. Opting out of federal testing and/or curriculum remains a parent’s right!

When the No Child Left Behind Waiver, Race to the Top K-12 and Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge federal grants were submitted in 2010 and 2011, we at MACC had not yet understood the dangers inherent in these federal regulations. Our limited actions in 2013 involved reading the federal law/grant applications and corresponding changes in state law, as well as, listening to archived deliberations of the legislative committee. We now have a great opportunity!!!

NEXT WEDNESDAY, a legislative committee from the House and Senate will convene to review, hear testimony and adopt the MDE State Plan for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The ESSA is another federal set of intrusive regulations from the already burgeoning Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which contains over 1,000 pages. Many of us attended the MDE ESSA public meetings and met like-minded individuals with similar concerns. Unfortunately, our and many others’ input fell on deaf ears. The MDE did not embed public input into our state plan. This time, the legislature is in charge of looking over the plan prior to adoption and submission to the feds.

At issue: Linking MCA Federal-Accountability Testing (which aligns to the federal standards and international curriculum) to student proficiency. Students will now receive points for exceeding, meeting or partially meeting proficiency. What’s new? If parents opt their kids out of testing, the student will receive no points and declared, “not proficient”. What will the labeling and consequences of “not proficient” mean for some of our highest-achieving students whose families annually choose to opt out.
Why is MACC concerned with the MCA testing and the ability to opt out?
1. The federal accountability testing (MCA for Minnesota) is the last nail in the coffin to fully realize a federalized education program for America. A federalized education program is unlawful, unconstitutional and leads us down that road where “the state” is the final authorizer and arbiter of educating and raising children.

2. By adopting the ESSA testing refusal point system failure-rating, Minnesota laws will now sanction and penalize parental voice. Only those approved parental voices who compliantly praise the federal testing program will be allowed.

3. By adopting the ESSA, Minnesota will be fully adopting all the federalized standards, including the Common Core standards and College-and-Career Ready Standards for English and Math. These standards are fully embedded in ESSA, unless the MDE has an exception for Math, as well as the next iteration, Competency-Based Education, the online-only option for schools. The ESSA federal tests align to these federal standards.

4. The online education companies are run by 3rd-party corporate entities from far, far away. This move will “lock down” testing, as well as remove parental engagement regarding standards, curriculum and aligned testing.

5. The MCAs tests align with the 3rd-party corporate national curriculum.

6. The Minnesota statute 120B.11 (Minnesota’s World’s Best Workforce) has already diminished a parent’s role in curricular engagement through mandating huge 30-member curriculum teams which heretofore were intimate curriculum meetings between a few teachers and parents.
7. Testing is in fact a part of curriculum. Testing is curriculum. Curricular decisions to review and opt out, found in Minnesota Statute 120B.20 will be diminished if not annulled.

8. Further reason that Minnesota parents may want to opt their children out of MCAs is that the MCA’s are a Pearson product. Pearson states directly on their website that they align with the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals. This alignment structures and embeds international curriculum and testing content into Minnesota school curriculum and tests. Pearson represents neither local control or parental rights.
This is just how dangerous removing that last bit of local control and parental authority over testing and curriculum will be! MACC invites you to reach out and contact Rep Sondra Erickson and Senator Eric Pratt, Committee Chairs for the ESSA Plan Hearing, at your earlier convenience. Consider contacting your personal representative and senator. A quick email from each of us will make a dramatic impact.
Thank you in advance for advocating for Minnesota’s children!

American Principles Project, Bill Gates, College & Career Ready Standards, Common Core Costs, Common Core State Standards, Common Core Teleconferences, Connections, Creepy Stuff, Curriculum, Data Mining, ESEA, Home School, HSLDA, MACHE

White House Announces Transition to Openly Licensed Education Resources for Schools

November 2, 2015 educationwatchdog Leave a comment

White House Announces Transition to Openly Licensed Education Resources for Schools

The White House announces the Federal Government is to *begin to model the transition to openly licensed educational materials at scale in U.S. K-12 schools. We look forward to engaging with the national and global community to identify opportunities for open licensing to accelerate educational equity for all learners regardless of their financial situations or geographic locations.* This is aligned to Article 26 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.
Is this the move toward a national and/or international curriculum? What could go wrong?

Reposted from Missouri Education Watchdog

Openly Licensed Educational Resources: Providing Equitable Access to Education for All Learners

by Gretchen Logue

Summary: The Federal government is supporting the use of open educational resources to provide equitable access to quality education.

Everyone has the right to education…Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. —Article 26 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights

Access to quality education is an essential component of addressing many of our biggest global and societal challenges. Last year, the United Nations surveyed youth around the world about their priorities—what opportunities they want to be offered. More than improvements in electricity and infrastructure, healthcare, and better jobs, what young people asked for was a good education. It’s no surprise that young people value education. World Bank economists estimate that for every year of study, individual income increases by 10-15 percent. These increases don’t just affect individuals; they often generate a “ripple effect” of benefits to families and entire communities. Openly licensed learning resources, also known as open educational resources (OER), can increase access to high-quality education opportunities and reduce the cost of education around the world.

On September 28, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, U.S. Department of Education, and U.S. Department of State co-hosted an International Open Education Workshop, bringing together 40 civil society and foreign government participants from eight countries to examine existing open education efforts and identify opportunities for future collaboration between government and civil society. This workshop is one of several open education commitments made as part of the second U.S. Open Government Partnership National Action Plan.

At the workshop, participants shared examples of ways that openly licensed educational materials are being used to solve local education challenges around the world. For example, one participant shared open-source tools that enable offline access to openly licensed educational videos — technology that has supported education for Syrian refugees, inmates in U.S. correctional facilities, and over 2 million other learners from around the world. Open licenses grant anyone the rights to revise, remix, and redistribute these educational materials, so investments in content or tools made by one organization or government can be leveraged by other institutions and used in new ways.

Another participant, drawing on her recent experience serving as a Foreign Service Officer in the Balkans, noted the potential for openly licensed educational materials to honor local knowledge and information needs. In particular, she described how an open-source model could empower educators to collaborate on and adapt textbooks across local and international borders, retaining fundamental content while tailoring certain features, like names in math word problems, to reflect students’ ethnic diversity and culture. Empowering local communities to adapt, translate, and create collections of learning materials that meet their information, learning, or language needs helps side-step assumptions and honor learners’ lived experiences.

Open education advances key national priorities, including supporting shared economic prosperity, strengthening civil society, and investing in human development. Over the next year, the U.S. Government will continue efforts to expand and accelerate the use and availability of openly licensed educational materials worldwide. In addition, we will begin to model the transition to openly licensed educational materials at scale in U.S. K-12 schools. We look forward to engaging with the national and global community to identify opportunities for open licensing to accelerate educational equity for all learners regardless of their financial situations or geographic locations.

Richard Culatta is Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education.

Sunshine Ison is Director of the ECA Collaboratory at the U.S. Department of State.

Nancy Weiss is Senior Advisor to the Chief Technology Officer at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

American Principles Project, Bill Gates, College & Career Ready Standards, Common Core Costs, Common Core State Standards, Common Core Teleconferences, Constructivism, Curriculum, Data Metrics, Data Mining, ESEA, Home School, HSLDA, MACHE, Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, Minnesota Department of Education, Minnesota Senate Education Committee, No Child Left Behind, Pearson, personally identifiable information, Race-to-the-top, US Chamber of Commerce, World's Best Workforce

Minnesota’s Data Practices Commission Meets our State Dystopian Data System Novel-in-the-Making

September 14, 2015 educationwatchdog Leave a comment

Minnesota’s Data Practices Commission Meets our State Dystopian Data System Novel-in-the-Making

Can you imagine your child’s school teacher or principal presenting you with your life’s profession in the 7^th grade? Without you or your parent’s consent or discussion? In Minnesota, “career pathways” which lead to “successful workforce outcomes” decided primarily by a child’s data is one of the main missions of the State Longitudinal Educational Data System or SLEDS. Minnesota meet Dystopia!

Last December 2014, the recently formed Data Practices Commission sat down for a presentation from the Minnesota Office of High Learning to find out just what is going on with data collection and the student database in our state. Although the presentation involved mostly goals and management of the SLEDS, career pathways were mentioned in passing. I was rather amazed at the amount of information on career pathways in Minnesota!

Remember Lois Lowry’s, The Giver, written in 1993? The novel is “set in a society which at first appears as a Utopian Society but then later is revealed to be a Dystopian one, as the story progresses. The novel follows a boy named Jonas through the twelfth and thirteenth years of his life. The society has eliminated pain and strife by converting to “Sameness,” a plan that has also eradicate emotional depth from their lives. Jonas is selected to inherit the position of Receiver of Memory, the person who stores all the past memories of the time before Sameness, as there may be times where one must draw upon the wisdom gained from history to aid the community’s decision making. Jonas struggles with concepts of all of the new emotions, and things being introduced to him, and whether they are inherently good, evil, in-between, and if it’s even possible to have one without the other. The Community lacks any color, memory, climate and terrain whatsoever, all in effort to preserve structure, order, and a true sense of equality beyond personal individuality.”

“Jonas, who is eleven years old, is apprehensive about the upcoming Ceremony of Twelve (7^th grade), where he will be assigned his career or his “assignment in the community”. In his society, little privacy is allowed; even private houses have two-way intercoms which can be used to listen in for infractions of the rules. However, the rules appear to be readily accepted by all, including Jonas.” Read more here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giver

Granted Lowry’s book is fiction but this story is eerily close to reality! Interest in Career Pathways and Career Pathway Systems has been soaring since our US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan made this comment highlighting his faith in data-driven decision making.

“My personal favorite [story] occurred when he [Duncan] visited a charter school in Brooklyn. He told those assembled that the United States is facing both an economic crisis and an educational crisis. And then came this immortal line: “We should be able to look every second grader in the eye and say, ‘You’re on track, you’re going to be able to go to a good college, or you’re not,” he said.” Diane Ravitch, blog. http://dianeravitch.net/2014/04/05/my-favorite-line-from-arne-duncan-what-is-yours/

According to the Office of Higher Learning (Minnesota Department of Education) website, who helps manage the Minnesota State Longitudinal Education Data System, “SLEDS brings together data from education and workforce to identify viable pathways for individuals in achieving successful outcomes in education and work. It will also inform decisions to support and improve education and workforce policy, helping to create a more seamless education and workforce system for all Minnesotans. SLEDS is populated with education and workforce data collected from the contributing state agencies MDE, the Office of Higher Education and the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.” http://sleds.mn.gov/

How does the Minnesota Department of Education collect your child’s data? How are the databases populated? The data is sent via ipad or chromebook. Notice how many school districts are utilizing completely online curriculum and/or testing? Your child logs in with their own personal school log-in ID and the data flies. This is one of the identifiers for your child in the SLEDS. That news for another segment!

Minnesota’s Career Pathways System is quite robust and nearly complete! So who is interested in your little human capital’s career path besides you, the parent and your child? There are numerous organizations in addition to:

Your child’s school district

Minnesota Department of Education

Minnesota State Universities and Colleges

Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development

Minnesota State Legislature via Minnesota World’s Best Workforce: Statute 120B.11

https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/?id=120b.11

Minnesota Chamber of Commerce

Minnesota Workforce Council
http://www.mwca-mn.org/Youth/SW%20MN%20Career%20Pathways-MWCA.pdf

Pearson Workforce Education

https://viridislearning.com/

The ACT and ACT WorkKeys

Alliance for Quality Career Pathways

Advancing Career and Technical Education for Career Pathways

Data Quality Campaign

http://dataqualitycampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/files/pdf/stateprofiles/MN.pdf

A Career Pathway is your child’s sequence in curriculum, and therefore THE curriculum! At what age do children know their own minds well enough to make big life decisions, such as their life-long career? Business leaders need to ask themselves if 7^th grade or earlier, an unwise “investment”?

Teachers and schools are no longer in the driver’s seat in curriculum development or curriculum-sequencing. Will these career pathways educate a child for all occupations, the broad liberal arts education that every child deserves, or deliver a more narrow path for just a few occupations? Who is ultimately in charge regarding curriculum? Is it education or business? That’s the question we must ask! We feel that every child should be given every a great academic education, not a mere skills-based training, while allowing them to reach for the stars, whether it be in 2nd grade, 7th grade or 12th grade.

We highly encourage parents to refuse the tests and surveys given online, particularly computer adaptive as well as refuse online curriculum. These three components feed the data system.

NEXT UP: We delve into the world of Career Pathways from all perspectives!

College & Career Ready Standards, Common Core Costs, Common Core State Standards, Common Core Teleconferences, Constructivism, Curriculum, Data Mining, ESEA, Home School, HSLDA, No Child Left Behind, Pearson, personally identifiable information, Race-to-the-top, World's Best Workforce

More MACC Talks Coming Soon to Maple Grove and Eagan

April 24, 2015 educationwatchdog Leave a comment

We have more talks coming up soon!

TOMORROW, is the Minnesota Libertarian Convention, April 24th at the Cambria Suites in Maple Grove. Linda will be speaking at 5:30 on Common Core: Why is it Bad for America?

NEXT WEEK, Thursday, April 30th, we are at Rasmussen College – Eagan in Room 201 at 6:30pm. We connect the dots, from federal and corporate mandates to state and local implementation. Please attend to get the WHOLE PICTURE!