Colorado school leaders are taking overt steps to reclaim local control of education. Here are the signs:
- Two Republican U.S. Senate candidates, Ken Buck and Jane Norton want to dismantle or retool the U.S. Department of Education.
Rural superintendents refused to sign onto the state’s Race-to-the-Top application.
- State Education Board member Peggy Littleton is leading the charge against Colorado adopting “common-core” standards devised under the endorsement of the National Governor’s Association and the Chief State School Officers.
Board member Littleton hopes to head off an August 2 vote of the State Board to adopt the English and math standards.
Iowa’s State Board of Education may take similar action soon. The Board’s June agenda featured a discussion of common core standards. Acting Iowa DE Director Kevin Fangman is quoted in a June 14, 2010 Des Moines Register article as saying that the State Board is likely to act this month.
Littleton told the Denver Post “It is unconstitutional for the federal government to step in and mandate and require that everybody use those standards. The obvious next step is a national curriculum….When you have a progressive mind-set teaching socialism, who has control of this? What are local parents to do?”
Colorado is similar to Iowa in that the Colorado adopted a new set of 14 state standards but is now being asked to adopt national, common-core standards.
In Iowa, the Model Core Curriculum is touted as a near look alike to state standards. Iowa school districts facing budget cuts are asking whether this state mandated curriculum could or even should be adopted under the set July 2012 and 2014 timelines.
Mixing the Iowa Core and the national standards? The Iowa DE says it is committed to having one document for districts to work from if Iowa adopts the national standards. The agency will blend the national standards and the Iowa Core. “We are going to make sense of it for them,” Fangman told the Register.
(From Rep. Dwayne Alons Capitol Comments newsletter)
Howie on 07.15.2010
If you like national health care, you’re going to love national curriculum! And, if you like national health care, then, you’ll love U.S. Dept of Edcuation Assistant Deputy Secretary Kevin Jennings’, and those like him, helping craft the common core standards for health education as well! He founded the Gay and Lesbian Independent School Teachers Education Network, and with his having authored six books on gay rights and education, has the credentials as the Obama administration values for educating young Americans. Of course, in Helena Montana, where a controversial sed ed program has pitted parents against the schools desire to teach first graders that sex with the same gender is “love” and other specifics that most parents objected to, the parents are able to FIGHT BACK as they have a LOCAL school board to challenge; however, if you think they’ll get an audience in Washington, DC, to challenge that curriculum . . . well . . . you get the idea. My hat is off to Peggy Littleton in Colorado and any other state board member in any state who is willing to stand up and fight the good fight to protect our children from the radical, leftist, socialist, homosexual, and anti-American agenda of the Obama Administration.