Students Advocate Novel Civil Disobedience During PARCC Tests & Pearson Enlists Governments in Retaliation

UPDATED 
*Tweet, baby, tweet -- Students share absurd PARCC question responses & Big Brother Pearson enlists local governments to act as Big Brother *NM districts into overdrive, bullying parents who opt their children out
News media have covered the test opt-out movement as the Common Core-based Pearson-owned Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) tests have been rolled out: students walked out of school en masse in various locales in New Mexico; elsewhere students quietly or not so quietly opted out. And students and parents have engaged in many public demonstrations: In Colorado, in Illinois; today in Mississippi parents advised students to skip the test, today in Rhode Island protesting in defense of a teacher that spoke to students about the controversial PARCC test.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan ventured into a Chicago school recently, only to encounter people protesting the PARCC tests. See video at this site. (Was this part of a thinly veiled effort by Duncan to shore up mayor Rahm Emanuel's fledgling reelection campaign in the face of Chuy Garcia's increasingly formidable challenge?) This week Chicago activists sent this public letter to Emanuel and the Chicago Public Schools CEO, telling them to stop the bullying and deceptions towards parents seeking to opt their children out of the tests.   He was challenged on Common Core, high-stakes tests and funding priorities. Ravitch's blog reported that outrageously, he flat-out lied when he denied that the federal government imposed Common Core and its attendant unfunded mandates.
Save Our Schools helped the discussion process by offering "The 12 Reasons We Oppose the PARCC Test."
Florida has withdrawn from a national consortium, but it still has a Common Core-based high stakes test. There a mother met with such district resistance to allowing her to pick up her own daughter that she had to call 911 to get her daughter released. The district said that parents picking up their children was disruptive of tests and therefor was not allowed.

A Colorado student cut to the central point: this is a test owned, controlled and promoted by a private entity: "We want a test where it is not owned by a private company but owned by the state and that way we actually have the people that know about the subject, that know bout what students need to know."

School districts, under the influence of state dictates for the Common Core tests, have resorted to 'bribing' students to take the test. For example, as Valerie Strauss reported in the Washington Post, the Morris Hills Regional New Jersey district is offering an American Express gift card to the grade with the highest PARCC participation.
Several districts are aggressively bullying and stretching the truth to get students to give in to the tests. One New Mexico district claimed that compliance with the tests was dictated by federal, state and local law. Read this report on administrator pressure on parents to comply, "Naming names: These school districts are bullying parents into PARCC testing they can actually opt students out of."

In the Diane Ravitch a post read "Time for Civil Disobedience." The article said, in part, “I would encourage all of my students to post pics of the questions or tweet the questions as they remember them. I did this several years ago when Indiana had just one graduation qualifying exam. I got reprimanded and transferred to a terrible inner city school, but the action did have some impact because the state had to admit that a great deal of the exam questions were wrong or too poorly worded to make sense. I realize that in today’s testing-mania culture I would probably have been fired, lost my license or maybe even jailed, but this stuff is so terrible we need to start some civil disobedience.”

Recent blog postings have mentioned some outrageous and creative responses. Actually, Twitter lit up with these irreverent suggested responses to test questions in the April 2014 round of tests.
"12 more ways students sabotaged the PARCC field tests" opened,

So, I think its unanimous. Everyone hates the PARCC test, except for those who made it, or can make money off of it.

— 
Cornelius Bayler (@CorneliusBayler) April 12, 2014

Students have recognized that the tests are one absurd, sick joke and have advised their fellow test takers to give silly, absurdist responses to test sections involving written statements.

Spongebob Squarepants seemed to be a popular way to answer PARCC essay questions:

After takin the parcc for the past 3 days and having to write an essay everyday id say ive written a short novel about my love of spongebob

— OG Bobby Johnson (@SeXYDOUBLEsTuFF) April 3, 2014

Dakota Parks @ImGayGoAway

Follow

Just gonna click some f***ing answers and bull**** this PARCC test today. Not in the f***ing mood for this s***.

9:17 AM - 11 Apr 2014

Lisa♡ @lisaacalabrese_

Follow

Best part of today was quoting mean girls on the parcc test

2:58 PM - 11 Apr 2014

2 RETWEETS 2 FAVORITES

One student adopted thug typing style:

Optimus @ChrisKlein_

Follow

Guys remember the answer to number 4 on the PARCC is A$VP Trill Fo Lyfe

10:03 AM - 13 Apr 2014

Another recommended using texting shorthand:

yung luce @lucebeave

Follow

tbh I just wrote "idk" "wtf" and "huh?" in all the boxes on the parcc test

12:34 PM - 7 Apr 2014

1 RETWEET 7 FAVORITES

* * *
Students have reportedly shared test questions and answer choices over social media. Tweeting of actual questions, rather than snarky comments were what really sent Pearson and their enablers ballistic.

Pearson assuming authority over students; social media monitoring
After a student tweeted about a test question, the Britain-based multinational education and media mammoth Pearson announced that it was monitoring social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
But worse, beyond the fact that the organization is spying (albeit on a public activity) on students' online communication, is the fact that this is a private organization that has succeeded in leaning on public entities, state departments of education and local school districts, for the mission of disciplining those students. The Living in Dialogue blog has gone as far as to suggest that surveillance is a natural trajectory of high-stakes tests.
Surely, this is the corporatization, the privatization of the disciplinary role of government. First we saw the corporations initiate the privatization of education, now with Pearson telling governments to monitor and discipline students, it is assuming disciplinary authority over students. This is an ugly moment in American democracy.
Following Pearson's statement that it is monitoring students' behavior on the issue of test questions, a New Jersey local district superintendent sent an email to peer superintendents on the issue of student social media statements. After Bob Braun's blog exposed this (and his blog was temporarily hit by a denial of service attack --was Pearson leaning on the blog service hosting his blog?) the superintendent admitted that she indeed sent the email, and today the New Jersey State Education department issued a statement echoing some of the talking points.

Breaking news: the New Jersey Assembly Committee Chair has issued a call for Pearson to appear and explain its student surveillance policies.
Pearson, PARCC, SBAC in the Brave New World of high-stakes tests enlists in government to join them in playing the Big Brother role
Now, the critiques have been raised that tweeting on the tests disturbs the integrity of the tests. But the problem is that these tests have taken a life of their own, evincing a government juggernaut that is not backed by popular will. The tests have gigantic implications for students' own academic lives and but on teachers' professional lives and schools' institutional lives. Democratic activism has not led to the Democratic/Republicans' lessening of the testing onslaught. Furthermore, any contractual obligation upon students that might exist is an invalid contract. If there are such statements that students must assent to the students are not signing these on their free accord.
Furthermore, one child psychologist has argued that with the test-taker's alienation from the process the tests are alienating to students, and that ominously, in the process are committing "soul murder."

Joyce Murdock Feilke, a child psychologist, warns of the harm our society is doing to children by subjecting them to 10-12 hours of high-stakes testing. This stress does nothing positive for them. By the time the scores are returned, the children have a new teacher. The teacher is not allowed to see what they got wrong. The tests have no diagnostic value. The only beneficiaries are the testing corporations.

Thus, this weekend we saw a teacher posting on Diane Ravitch's blog a comment, which led to a full blogpost, "Teachers: Time for Civil Disobedience."

The Common Core test consortium pressuring upon districts to be vigilant about how students use their free speech does not end with Pearson and its PARCC tests. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) has made similar statement, but has gone a step beyond, in its one page memo, "Social Media Monitoring during the Field Test." Mercedes Schneider noted in her blog, "Smarter Balanced Offers Tips for Monitoring Students on Social Media." the SBAC suggested modus operandi:

The SBAC-suggested keys to successful social media “test security trolling”?
1) Set up a school social media site, and encourage students to join.
2) Search social media sites by keyword.

A sinister, deceptive aspect of this is that under this plan, schools would be pre-emptively work against students' free communication, using a school social networking site to monitor students without students' knowing of this.

More correctly, civil disobedience traditionally involves resistance to unjust laws and government policies. We should not grant the veneer of public legitimacy to Pearson, et al by calling opposition to their test rules "civil disobedience." Such resistance is resistance to corporate authority over our lives.

The New Iron Triangle of the Information Sector, Education Reform and the Democrats

This quintessential blogpost by Paul Horton, "Will the Media Help Destroy Public Education?," at Anthony Cody's Living in Dialog blog lays out with great precision the dynamic nature of the forces at play with the war on public education.

The corporate media, the metrics-focused ideologues, and the education reformers more acutely, are aligned against the teachers. In the Republican-Democratic battle for money in the Citizens United era, the media / information technology sector of business are aligned more closely with the Democrats. This has profound significance for the direction of our country's education and for our political options. [graphics added]

Will the Media Help Destroy Public Education?

By Paul Horton.

Why have those defending public education had such an uphill fight in crafting a compelling counter to the mainstream message that “public education is broken”? How can we break through this monotonous monopoly of thinking with an alternative message?

As Noam Chomsky points out, the mainstream political discourse in America is largely shaped by media outlets under complete corporate control.

Who are the players here? Over the past two decades, as the internet has transformed communication, a circle of Silicon Valley billionaires have achieved great influence. Their outlook tends to be Libertarian, and finds much in common with neoliberals when it comes to education policy. These nouveau tech billionaires have found common cause with hedge fund managers and banking industry insiders, who also hold tremendous power.

According to Robert McChesney,

…much of the wealth generated by the Internet has been funneled into a small number of hands….[T]he Internet has produced monopolistic titans like Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, e-Bay, Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Oracle, and Qualcomm….In combination, these firms have almost unlimited power in Washington, and the only time they face any regulatory threat is when the giants find themselves on opposite sides of an issue….Academics trip over one another as they sing the praises of digital titans,

…but [T]he Internet brings one of the core contradictions of capitalism to the fore—what is good and rational for those who control the economy is bad and irrational for society as a whole. (Blowing the Roof Off the Twenty-First Century, 228-9)

The most important fact in American politics today is the Citizens United decision. With this, the hand of the Democratic Party was forced: in order to win major elections the party must accept major campaign funding from the Silicon Valley right libertarians, neoliberals and their financiers on Wall Street. For neoliberal Democrats who are forced to lick the Nikes of their major funders, the privatization of education has become the price they pay to get the dollars needed to win elections.

The Obama Administration’s education policies are the equivalent of doing dog tricks or “dancing” for someone who is holding a gun.

So what role does the media play in this dance?

Although things have improved slightly in the print media in 2014, almost all major print editorial pages are controlled by publishers who are whole hog on privatization and charters: NYT and Chicago Tribune and the Tribune network are leading the bandwagon and heavily influenced by Bloomberg, Broad, and Murdoch. The Chicago Sun-Times editorial page is completely compromised by the political pressure exerted by publishers friendly to governor-elect Bruce Rauner who supports privatization of education. The New Republic is dead, succumbing to Silicon Valley neoliberal libertarianism.

The Progressive, The Nation (the country’s oldest journal of political and cultural opinion), Salon, Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post most often include stories and voices of teachers in print; while Politico, The Huffington Post, Alternet, Truthout, and Common Dreams are open to teacher voices that call attention to a counter narrative.

Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody, Jon Pelto’s Education Blogger’s Network, Cynthia Liu’s K12 News Network,Tim Slekar’s Busted Pencils site, Dr. James Miller’s War Report, and the Network for Public Education, an organization formed to counter the neoliberal Democrats for Education Reform, have all worked to build online grassroots communities opposed to right libertarian and neoliberal public education disruption-destruction. Peter Greene has been relentlessly spot-on, taking Mr. Gates-Duncan-Petrilli on every day. The work of blogger-authors Mercedes Schneider and Jeff Bryant has been exemplary in reaching a broader audience at Huffington Post and Salon. Edushyster (Jennifer Berkshire) brings a deft humorous touch to her articles and interviews. Dozens of local bloggers around the country like Mike and Fred Klonsky in Chicago, The Jose Vilson in New York, and Julian Vasquez-Heilig’s Cloaking Inequity blog have been relentless, but don’t always get the attention they deserve.

Rethinking Schools is perhaps the longest standing alternative educational media outlet, and this organization has produced outstanding curriculum and analysis for more than twenty years.

Bill Moyers remained a stalwart presence on the air and online, and remains an inspiration to all of us who cherish his native Texas progressive populism that refuses to dismiss the moral dimensions of political economy in the face of an all out assault on public discourse maintained by the right libertarians of the Chicago School of economics who have come to dominate Obama Education policy. Democracy Now likewise produces news coverage that challenges the corporate narrative in education. The LA Progressivegives prominent space for teacher voices.  Travis Smiley is also worth noting, along with his sometime co-host, Dr. Cornel West, for their attention to the issues of poverty, and willingness to challenge the Obama administration’s policies.

MSNBC should be a progressive voice on education, and to an extent, Chris Hayes is open to teacher voices. Melissa Harris-Perry has sometimes also featured guests that question the reform narrative, such as Julian Vasquez-Heilig. However Rachel Maddow is reputed to be a friend of Eva Moskowitz and appears to supports the charter movement. Democrats are heavily influenced by NPR and PBS coverage that virtually excludes teacher voices except for a recent NPR series on the “Secret lives of teachers” that reifies the political, social, and economic contexts of educational issues. NPR and PBS both receive very generous support from the Gates and Walton foundations and Students First, which is heavily subsidized by many individuals and foundations hostile to public education. Among centrist Democrats heavily influenced by the Wall Street investors who support privatization of schools, NPR, PBS, and the New York Times remain the three most influential institutions that most directly shape mainstream public opinion on education issues.

These three major media outlets are in turn heavily influenced by studies coming from policy think tanks that receive generous contributions from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Broad Foundation, and The Bloomberg Fund. The Fordham Institute, AEI, the Joyce Foundation, and the Brookings Institute (turned neoliberal) and a spate of conservative think tanks have all produced non-peer reviewed papers to support the privatization of education. They have all received heavy subsidies from the above foundations, and education beat reporters and editorial pages routinely use talking points from these and other think tanks to write stories about education issues.

GMMB, a think-tank and PR firm located in Washington DC and heavily subsidized by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has also had a big impact on the shaping negative opinion of public schools and public school teachers. GMMB carefully prepared the media packets and campaign in support of the Common Core Standards and has worked very closely with the Fordham Institute to supply talking points and interviews to virtually every major media outlet. GMMB has hired media insiders who have worked in most major cable news and print media institutions, opening easy access to editorial boards and the country’s major education reporters. Mr. Duncan’s former PR officer, a former reporter for the LA Times, revolved into a GMMB job one year ago. It is not a stretch to say that there is virtually no institutional membrane existing between GMMB, the Fordham Institute, and the Department of Education under Secretary Duncan. Indeed, presidential appointments of top assistant secretaries that are closely connected with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are the norm within the Obama Department of Education. Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Institute was called by virtually every major print, cable, and digital reporter from 2012-14 for talking points in defense of the Common Core Curriculum which, like the Fordham Institute, is heavily funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Department of Education, for its part, promotes the agenda of Mr. Gates at every turn. Like a general threatening to bomb a noncompliant subaltern population, Mr. Duncan routinely disparages the teaching profession and public schools. Ignoring the validity decades of NAEP assessments, Mr. Duncan has turned Pearson Education loose on all American educators, students, and teachers by publicallly funding his own version of Operation Phoenix: the PARCC assessments that will not only hold all students to a higher standard, but will rid the country of “bad teachers.” This campaign intentionally ignores mountains of peer reviewed studies that indicate that ineffective teachers make up no more than 3% of the current teaching force in virtually every state.

Perhaps the most telling fact of the success of the GMMB-Fordham Institute-DoEd manufactured consent for the disruption and destruction of public schools is the virtual absence from major national print, digital, and cable public discourse of any discussion of what can only be called the Corvair-Edsel of the Education Industry complex: Pearson Education. I know of no corporation that consistently produces such shoddy products as Pearson Education. The public, especially parents, are learning about the lack of quality of Pearson software and sample questions when they consult online sample questions. Teachers have known about the shoddy quality of Pearson test generators for some time. This educational equivalent of Halliburton, Pearson has benefitted from greasing the wheels of the Obama campaign, and has enjoyed a very cozy relationship with Mr. Duncan’s Education Department from day one.

Pearson has not only profited from developing PARCC at warp speed on the federal dime to please Mr. Gates-Duncan-Petrilli, it has also obtained no bid contracts in many states that were greased by free trips given to state education superintendents. The Pearson Foundation has since been disbanded and fined by the New York State’s Attorney for such shady quid pro quo-reeking interactions. The fact that Pearson has not been taken to court in many states attests to the lack of effective ethics codes in the states and a lack of DOJ and FTC oversight. Such oversight is sorely lacking within an administration that serves Wall Street and Silicon Valley when it comes to education policy.

Because Pearson and PARCC are the centerpieces of Mr. Duncan’s policy agenda, and Chicago School ideas about building unfettered and more “efficient” economies of scale championed by Henry C. Simons, Milton Friedman and their students Gary Becker, Judge Richard Posner, and Richard Epstein; have heavily influenced the Chicago “clique” surrounding the president (Valerie Jarrett, Martin Nesbitt, Penny Pritzker, the board of the Commercial Club of Chicago who were essential to funding Obama’s first campaign) and the antitrust enforcement in the form of requiring Pearson Education to write competitive impact statements when it gobbles up more and more market share like an educational version of the movie “The Blob” is entirely moot at DOJ.

This story is the biggest story of the last several years that has not been touched by education reporters, especially local reporters who are assigned and held to deadlines.

Our biggest challenge to date is this: How can classroom teachers penetrate the corporate media apparatus? Can we cultivate enough relationships with the few reporters who have the courage to find stories that are critical of the dominant disruption-destruction ideology that can see through non peer reviewed and corporate foundation supported “studies”-propaganda.

Another question to examine is: can grassroots media marshal enough support to build coalitions in support of public education among fellow progressive populists?

We need senators Brown, Sanders and Warren to be more vocal in their support of public education. We need them on CNN and NBC. We need more sympathetic talking heads to speak out more forcefully and more often.

We must energize the congressional progressive caucus to work for public education by blasting away at the Gates supported, astro-turf funded, propagation of “’education reform’ as the Civil Rights issue of out time.”

We need Matt Damon to produce a feature film about teachers that are at war with disrupters and who are doing brilliant work in the classroom.

Most of all, we need to come together and act politically and fight. We need to learn more from Ras Baraka and Karen Lewis and join together with as many allies as possible to take neoliberal lies head-on.

Finally, we need to take heart from the people of Latin America and Greece who have defeated or are struggling with the neoliberal cultural apparatus. According to Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa, “Lies destroyed Latin America. People lie too much, from the press, the politicians, and on the street….I think one of the main problems around the world is that there are private networks in the communication business, for profit business providing public information, which is important for society. It is a fundamental contradiction.” “I think there should be more public and community media, organizations that don’t have that conflict between profits and social communication.” (quoted in McChesney, Blowing the Roof Off, 218).

Public Education Bloggers are actively pushing forward to create what Myles Horton called “islands of decency” within a neoliberal hurricane that seeks to monetize every human relationship, that destroys human relationships and potential within a digitalized “Glass Cage” filled with punitive test scores and VAM calculations. The fight requires us to break through the “Glass Cage” and join hands in one big progressive populist union.

As Graham Nash is fond of singing, ”Won’t you please come to Chicago.”

Paul Horton has taught for thirty years in virtually every kind of school. He began his teaching career in a recently integrated rural Texas middle school. He then taught for five years in a large urban high school in San Antonio’s West side where the majority of young people were ESL. He has been teaching at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, the country’s most diverse independent school founded by John Dewey, for fourteen years.

ALL Babies Walking By Six Months Old… A Satire on the Common Core Charade.

[copied from DivineSparksIgnites 
 -- On a serious note read my "Common Core and the Gates Education Commercialization Complex" from August, 2013.]

“A Lie cannot live.” – Dr. Martin Luther King

Race To The Stadium (RTTS) established…

A group of professional sports team owners and product sponsors decided the United States was losing ground globally in producing high quality athletes…. so they met with The President and the National Secretary of the Department of Sports to convince them to set new athletic policies. Soon after, the new RTTS (Race To The Stadium) was established.   A committee was selected to write new and rigorous standards starting from womb to stadium.

A handpicked group of professional team owners and employees of national product sponsors were selected to establish the new standards. A few adult level doctors were also added. Written in under a year, they were rolled out to the state Governors and the State Superintendents of Department of Sports. In order for the new Common Sport State Standards (CSSS) to be adopted into law, only the Governor and State Superintendent needed to sign.

Two signatures.

Bam!

Law.

It never went through the State House of Representatives nor the State Senate. In fact, these standards were pushed upon the states by the federal government and the National Department of Sports. This was not initiated by the people or for the people….

“Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”   Abraham Lincoln

Putting the values of the United States Republic aside, if the two governing officials signed the CSSS into law, a stimulus package of money arrived from the federal government to implement the new standards. If not signed, money was denied and/or removed.   “Naughty” were the states who did not sign on.

Naughty, Naughty. “You will leave your babies behind.”

Some Governors later admitted they were asked to sign the document before the final draft of the standards was completed, but… I guess this is beside the point.

The State Superintendent also needed to sign the document. No committees formed. No review process. No early childhood physical therapists consulted. No pediatricians consulted. No athletes gave input.

Definitely no parents. “What do they know?”

About a year after the State Superintendent signed the standards into law, a soft roll out to parents and pediatrician offices was initiated so enough time would be given to prepare their homes and offices. New baby materials, sports products, and technical support would need to be purchased to assist in helping the babies achieve the new standards.

Here were the new early babyhood Common Sports State Standards (CSSS):

1. All children shall walk by 6 months old.
2. All children shall run by 6.5 months old.
3. All children shall do summersaults by 7 months old.
4. All children shall do cartwheels by 7.5 months old.

It was ensured, by adhering to these rigorous standards, ALL babies would be on track for the Olympics and/or professional athleticism. No one questioned the age appropriate sports standards. No one questioned who wrote the standards… and those who did, in any way, were looked down upon.   Many, at first, even believed these standards were appropriate, necessary, and the answer to preparing the babies for a solid future in professional athletics and quite possibly a turn in the Olympic Games.

In the beginning, very few realized the standards were written by the owners of handpicked professional teams and the high ranking employees of the favored brand name sports products… like… hmmmmm….Nike, Gatorade, 5 Hour Energy… these well intended people, of course, really desired to start our babies off on the right foot. (No pun intended).

Next, a nationwide curriculum, specifically designed for parent use, was written by thesame people… contracts were drawn up, with undisclosed amounts of money to be paid to them. This curriculum was accessible to parents once they bought a tablet. This tablet was the only platform that could run the software. If they followed the steps perfectly, the parents were promised their children would accomplish these high and rigorous goals.

Interested in following the money?: 

http://thefederalist.com/2015/01/05/ten-common-core-promoters-laughing-all-the-way-to-the-bank/#.VLstqQEl1H4.facebook

Parents followed the lock step programs, using the accepted products only,  and pediatricians tracked their patient’s progress and entered weekly progress into a data tracking system to help parents target certain muscle groups that were failing in their babies legs.

Gill Bates, of course, in all of his athletic background and expertise, paid $200,000,000 to the committee to write the standards. The standards started at one day old. Each day, starting at day one, a lock step, scripted walking curriculum was established…incorporating all the sports baby products sold by the very writers of the CSSS.

Next, knowing the standards needed to be embraced and accepted by the masses, Bates, the athletic expert, also paid at least $200,000,000 for the promotion and advertisement of these new and rigorous baby standards… AND… do not forget… he also funded, through grants, the development of the software for the tablets for parental use.   Just imagine the profits $$$$$ made after every parent purchased one of these tablets.

Interestingly, even Gill Bates admitted the success of the new CSSS wouldn’t be known for 10 years. Listen at 45:22 in his speech to Harvard, “It will take 10 years to know if this “sport” stuff will work.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBHJ-8Bch4E&feature=youtu.be

The signs of implementation were clearly seen, as anyone driving through the majority of communities across the nation, or observing activity in local parks, saw no children playing or mommy’s pushing babies in strollers. Most were home practicing and following the programed script to ensure their child was walking on time. They didn’t want to “leave their babies behind” or to the doom of factory work for Nike.  Rather their dream was for their child to have the best chance of wearing the Nike gear out on the court as an athlete.

With time, many parents became frustrated with the script, and called their pediatrician’s office with their complaints. “This isn’t working.” Or “Johnny isn’t responding to lesson 6.” Or “My baby failed the three month module test, what do I do next?” Having the pressure themselves to ensure all their patients walked on their 6 month Birthday, the pediatricians continued to encourage integrity to the national walking program.

The pressure mounted.

Each parent knew they were required to take their child to a Smarter Balanced Athletic Testing Center to be analyzed by their Certified Pediatrician. The Pediatricians had checklists full of Criterion, Domains, Components, and Elements… with detailed rubrics (oops, I mean scales) to be tracked. All total there were 41 Elements within the Domains through the Elements based on the Components they would be judged upon whether they met the Criterion. The parent was given an evaluation based on all of this. Within the first 6 months of the baby’s life, the parent had four formal observations to determine if they were accomplishing the 41 Elements within the Domains through the Elements based on the Components and whether they were on track to meet the Criterion.

It was all a little confusing.

The parents were informed, by Senate Bill 5946, if their child was not walking by the exact date of 6 months old, they would lose their child for 3 hours a day to a state run walking school with the goal of closing the walking gap. Soon there were walking schools springing up throughout the land, filled with state trained certified walking specialists holding the “key” to successful walking.

In a private meeting, the Smarter Balanced Athletic Consortium (SBAC) met, to establish what level of walking would be acceptable to pass the 6 month walking mark.  They based the cut scores on the previous year’s field test done on countless babies throughout the land. The cut score was publicized and revealed approximately 30% of the children would indeed be able to walk by the 6 month mark. However, 70% would fail.

The parent’s fears grew.   They wanted the best for their babies, and not passing the Smarter Balanced Athletic Test would doom their babies to a life slaving in the Nike and Gatorade Factories, or worse yet, peddling 5 Hour Energy Drinks in local stores.

The state run walking schools were prepared, however, and remedial walking programs were written and sold to these schools by the very same company who designed the Smarter Balanced Athletic Test.

The Pressure Mounted.

District Doctor’s Offices, overseeing the Pediatricians, hired testing coordinators. The coordinators found practice walking interim assessments with checkpoint assessments in between the practice interim assessments. Parents could administer these practice tests in their own homes to prepare for the ultimate Smarter Balanced Athletic Test. The data was uploaded to the District Doctor’s Offices in order to follow each baby, parent, and pediatrician and keep track of who was performing well.

Next, Walking Specialists were hired to assist parents in how to implement the tablet run Walking Program and answer the questions that continued to arise. The Walking Specialists were also able to help the parents look at the data from the interim tests and the checkpoints in between the interim tests. This assisted the parents to better understand how to target specific muscle areas needing stimulation, and established next steps for their baby in order to ensure their success on the Smarter Balanced Athletic Test.

The end goal for all, no matter what level they served in the Sporting System, was to get the baby to….

Pass.   The.   TEST.

The Pressure Escalated.

As the parents implemented the new Walking Program, they were informed and mandated to attend several evening professional development classes in order for them to understand the new Parental Evaluation System. You know, the one in which they had to show evidence of the 41 Elements within the Domains through the Elements based on the Components to see whether they were on track to meet the Criterion?

Baby said, “Eh?”

Their checklists looked much like the following: 

Harder still, the parents had been mandated by the state to utilize a new Nutritional Program and Eating Schedule, (written by 5 Hour Energy), for their babies that was entirely different than the one used before. So… now… they were implementing the new Walking Program which included utilizing a new technology with the tablets, establishing a new Nutritional Program and Eating Schedule for their babies (thanks 5 Hour Energy!), as well as learning how they would be evaluated upon these things… all at the same time.

Sheesh!

Who would have dared question this charade?

 It was a Race To The Stadium…

 The Pressure Continued to Mount.

The Pediatricians were “under the gun” too. They were also judged and evaluated by similar criterion, much like the parents. Percentages of pass rates of his/her patients were logged and tracked into CEDARS, the state data bank. The data was then uploaded to The Feds. FERPA laws were loosened, so data could be released to third party vendors. Every pediatrician… every parent… every baby followed…

Tracked.
Data logged.
National Baby IDs established.
(The following link shows how to access the National IDs and how the FERPA laws were loosened):http://abcsofdumbdown.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-greatest-christmas-present-to.html?m=1

If the Pediatrician’s percentage rate was found failing, the state closed the doctor’s practice, and brought in their own set of better trained, “higher quality” doctors to run the offices.  All at tax payer expense of course.

Sadly, the pediatricians were tied to their desks, entering their evaluation data into computers from the four observations of each parent capturing the 41 Elements within the Domains through the Elements based on the Components to see whether they were on track to meet the Criterion.

Baby said, “Eh?”

The actual time with their patients decreased significantly because most had anywhere from 45 – 100 parents to track times four in a sixth month period.  (There’s some mathematics for you!)

Note… this was a “growth model” with the full purpose of helping the parents become better at teaching their babies to walk.

Again Gill Bates got involved, and helped fund Pediatrician For America (PFA). This program allowed those with a bachelor degree to be put in five week crash courses to become Pediatricians. After all, most were young and willing to follow the script and do exactly what they were told. Another benefit to the PFA, was the lower end salaries paid to these new doctors due to their placement on the salary schedule.  Additionally, this was considered a good thing because many of the traditionally educated Pediatricians were leaving the field and Pediatrician shortages became a real problem.

Sadly, the PFA program began to collapse too, as most PFA doctors gave only two years of their lives to helping babies walk before moving on to other jobs that became their real careers.

The Pressure Increased.

In the beginning stages of the implementation of the CSSS (Common Sports State Standards), it was decided the parents needed to incorporate a new sleep therapy program. New “research” had come out stating babies with strict sleep schedules were better able to practice their leg exercises each day to prepare for walking. The parents again, were called to more professional development in the evening to understand the strict sleeping program and how to adhere to it without waiver. Boxes arrived to their homes.   They cleared out hall closets to make room for all the resources arriving from the state.

The Pressure Point of Collapse Loomed.

A few parents and a few pediatricians started to raise some questions. They were scorned.Didn’t they understand these national Common Sport State Standards were written by experts in the field and necessary to prepare babies for the Olympics and Professional Sports? Didn’t they understand how critical it was to be able to compete globally with other countries producing star athletes?

The few parents and pediatricians grew in strength. They began to uncover the CSSS weren’t written by experts, but rather by the owners of professional sports teams and the product sponsors. Their voices grew.

In fact, in New York State alone, the Pediatricians wrote a letter of concern regarding the evaluation of parents by baby walking scores. It was signed by more than 1,535 New York pediatricians and more than 6,500 parents:http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/11/24/following-the-common-core-money-where-are-millions-of-dollars-going/

Another joint document was written and signed by over 500 early baby specialists stating their concerns with the CSSS:http://www.edweek.org/media/joint_statement_on_core_standards.pdf

Still many states insisted on staying the course. Eyes shut. Ears closed.   A lot of officials made arguments the cost was already too high and there would be no way to abandon the CSSS.

Dr. Peg Luksik wrote, “When parents approach school districts or state legislatures with their concerns about the disasters occurring in Common Sport “homes” and ask that the program be stopped before even more damage is done to the education and self-esteem of America’s little ones, they are told that such a step would be irresponsible because of the huge amounts of money that have already been spent. So our “babies” will just have to “soldier on”.

Dr. Luksik went on to say:

“The apparent success of that argument must have many other industries rethinking their approaches to problems.

Pharmaceutical companies who have been forced to stop production of a new drug that made it all the way to the final testing stage before the discovery of serious negative side effects could claim that they had already invested a great deal of money, so it would be “irresponsible” to stop production at this late date.

And companies that brought drugs into the marketplace, only to be faced with recall either because the drug had not been properly tested or unforeseen complications had arisen from its use, could make the same claim and avoid having to pull that product off the shelves.”

 Dr. Luksik makes more arguments for the halt of the CSSS despite the money spent so far.  She furthered her logical argument by mentioning how the auto industry may need to rethink how they go about business. 

A failing car?

No need for recalls.

After all… it cost too much to design the car, manufacture the car, and transport them to all the car dealerships.

Her full article can be found here: http://nyunited4kids.com/2015/01/but-we-have-spent-so-much-money/

…
Fast forward ten years.

“Funny” thing…

Few pediatrician doctor’s offices exist. There are thousands and thousands of state run baby schools of walking. Parents are up in arms… protesting. Their babies no longertheirs.

And…

“Funny” thing…

Ten years later… The majority of 6 month old babies… still… aren’t… walking.

Ingenious Experiment.

For Whom?

…
FOR WHOM?

…
Real or not real? –Peeta Mellark, The Hunger Games

This is the birth to kindergarten mental health interventions for babies. This is “research” for the early learning and the $1 billion Obama is funding for daycare and preschool.  See for yourself:

http://abcsofdumbdown.blogspot.com/2015/01/obama-targets-babies.html?m=1

Passionately Submitted,

RAZ ON FIRE

References:

1. HB 5946: http://app.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=5946&year=2013
2. Teacher Evaluation Bill:  http://tpep-wa.org/about-tpep/legislation/essb-5895/