A big thank-you to all those who filled out a witness form supporting the bills designed to stop the Common Core State Standards in Missouri (SB 514 & SB 798)! You’ll be interested to learn that the news coming out of Wednesday’s Hearing with the Senate Education Committee has not only been fascinating – but encouraging as well.
For example, Missouri First writes that over 1300 Missouri citizens filled out witness forms, which made quite an impression when they were delivered to the committee. “The citizens who packed the hearing room made an even bigger impression, though.”
Missouri Freedom vs. Common Core: Perhaps most interesting is the report that Anne Gassel of Missouri Coalition Against Common Core shared in regards to Wednesday’s meeting between the Missouri people and their leadership. “It is finally sinking in to our legislators that Common Core is a copyright protected product owned by a private trade association and there is no official path for the public or state governments to petition a private entity to change their product. That’s why common core is an all or nothing proposition. You either like it and take it AS IS or you don’t. And once we go down this path there is no turning back. Who would ever even TRY to develop competing standards with all the money and political influence behind CC? This will grant a permanent monopoly to CCSSI and Achieve Inc., on whose board of directors our Governor happens to sit.”
Powerful Testimony: “The committee heard some powerful testimony from one teacher about the crushing effects of these standards on our youngest learners,” Gassel notes. “That shouldn’t be surprising since CCSSI couldn’t be bothered to put any early education experts on the development teams and then ignored a letter signed by 500 such experts telling them their standards ‘conflict with compelling new research in cognitive science, neuroscience, child development, and early childhood education about how young children learn, what they need to learn, and how best to teach them in kindergarten and the early grades.”
Common Core Advocates attempting to suppress the truth? Gassel also discusses a testimony about the extreme suppression of teachers who are concerned about what is best for children and don’t like what Common Core does to them. “Lieutenant Governor Kinder, who was there in attendance, responded that his office will be following the two teachers who testified to make sure there is no retribution for them speaking up. I bet we could fill his office with documentation from teachers around the state who have been told they are not to talk about CC by their administration or who have been marginalized if they have. Senator Nieves said the more he looks into this, the more it feels like he is reading a John Grisham novel. Who can blame him when a representative from Thomas Fordham Institute flies in all the way from DC to give three minutes of testimony to stop MO from getting out of CC? When asked why he, with no ties to Missouri, would make such an effort, the witness could only say that he was just so concerned that MO would have low standards. The audience could not keep the giggles under wraps on that one.”
