By Brad McQueen
The Arizona Board of Education announced that it has awarded the contract to deliver Arizona’s new Common Core test to AIR ( American Institutes for Research), “one of the world’s largest behavioral and social science research and evaluation organizations”.
They also revealed the new name of our new Common Core test so reset your Common Core acronym decoder ring for AZMerit (Arizona’s Measurement of Educational Readiness to Inform Teaching). I for one will not be playing the name game, and memorizing yet another acronym, and will merely call it Arizona’s Common Core test.
There is nothing fresh about this AIR. Rather, AIR is the same old stale Common Core company that has a contract with the Smarter Balanced testing group that, along with the PARCC testing group AZ used to be a part of, received over $350 million from the U.S. Department of Education to develop a Common Core test to assess the privately owned and secretly created federal Common Core standards. They do keep it all in the family in the cult of Common Core.
AIR has also received close to $38 million to date from Bill Gates’ Common Core fanny pack to push his progressive education agenda which his kids will not be subjected to, by the way, as they are safely ensconced in an elite private school. Bill Gates’ kids are being trained to be the elitist shepherds, while your kids are being trained to be the Common Core sheep.
It is only a matter of time before the Common Core aligned bureaucrats at the AZ Department of Education suggest, in order to save money on our newly adopted $19 million test, that we join other states in the Smarter Balanced testing group to create and administer our state’s test. No doubt they will also throw in something about doing it all for the sake of the “children” too as they further give over control of our kids’ minds to the cult of Common Core.
Don’t’ get me wrong, I’m really glad the Pearson/PARCC group lost out on winning the Common Core test contract. Not even the current Superintendent of Public Instruction could stomach choosing Pearson/PARCC for our Common Core test after all the collusion between the AZ Department of Education and the Pearson/PARCC group was exposed here in the AZ Daily Independent.
But in the end, who really cares which goose stepping, Common-Core-loving test company administers Arizona’s Common Core test?
Does adopting a new Common Core test negate the fact that the federal Common Core learning standards were created by a secret cabal of non-educators and are owned by two private Common Core groups in Washington, D.C.?
Does adopting a new Common Core test return sovereignty over what is taught to Arizona’s kids and therefore control over what goes into their minds back to parents?
Does adopting a new Common Core test stop the suctioning of data from our kids from preschool through college?
Does adopting a new Common Core test reinstate the requirement that parents must be notified and their permission obtained before sharing their kids’ personal data with data predators at private companies and at the federal government?
Does adopting a new Common Core test forbid connecting student data to teachers as a way of making sure teachers are in compliance with the commands of Common Core Central Command at the U.S. Department of Education and the myriad of front groups they hide behind?
Does adopting a new Common Core test prevent the collusion that has been taking place under Common Core between Big Business, which is beholden to its bottom line, and our elected officials, who are supposed to be looking out for our kids and their parents who elected them?
Does adopting a new Common Core test prevent the College Board from dumbing down college admission standards and tests to align to the dumbed down Common Core standards and restructuring the Advanced Placement History curriculum to stress a reimagined version of American history espousing American imperialism and oppression rather than American exceptionalism?
Does adopting a new Common Core test prevent the progressive takeover and centralization of our education deliver system to ensure conformity and compliance rather than individualism and innovation in our kids and our teachers?
The answer to all the above questions is, “HELL NO!”
Let’s cut through the crap. Any system that seeks to control our kids’ minds through controlling what they learn in the class and seeks to divorce them from their birthright of exceptionalism is evil. Common Core is evil.
I’ll speak plainly, I consider Common Core tantamount to a child predator stalking our nation’s children as it seeks to condition and control as it gathers all that personal data. Like a predator in the wild, the Common Core and its collaborators seek to separate our vulnerable children from the herd and their parents/protectors so that it may more easily exert its influence and its control over them.
Governor Brewer, Superintendent Huppenthal, and a compliant “conservative” legislature allowed this child predator through the protective walls of our state back in 2010. They have been nourishing, supporting, and defending this child predator ever since.
The “conservative” legislature and its leaders may introduce half-hearted, piecemeal legislation doomed to failure to put up a public show of being against the Common Core, but they have thus far failed to produce a realistic, comprehensive bill to pull this child predator called Common Core from our state roots and all. Our legislature is therefore complicit.
They may try to disguise this Common Core child predator by changing its name or dressing it up in a new suit, but it is at long last time to demand that our politicians take a stand and be counted. They are either acting on behalf of Common Core’s success or acting on behalf of Common Core’s demise.
With child predators there is no middle ground. Where do your elected officials stand? Where do you stand Arizona?
Brad McQueen is a former Common Core insider and current public school teacher in Tucson, Arizona and is the author of the anti-Common Core book “The Cult of Common Core”. Connect with Brad at cultofcommoncore@gmail.com
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